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This Time a Scathing Vanity Fair Restaurant Review

June 10, 2011 by PDX Food Dude 7 Comments

…intimidatingly gross flabs of chilly pâté, with a slight coating of pustular yellow fat

From Vanity Fair –

What you actually find when you arrive at L’Ami Louis is singularly unprepossessing. It’s a long, dark corridor with luggage racks stretching the length of the room. It gives you the feeling of being in a second-class railway carriage in the Balkans. It’s painted a shiny, distressed dung brown. The cramped tables are set with labially pink cloths, which give it a colonic appeal and the awkward sense that you might be a suppository. In the middle of the room is a stubby stove that also looks vaguely proctological.

…we order foie gras and snails to start. Foie gras is a L’Ami Louis specialty. After 30 minutes what come are a pair of intimidatingly gross flabs of chilly pâté, with a slight coating of pustular yellow fat. They are dense and stringy, with a web of veins. I doubt they were made on the premises. The liver crumbles under the knife like plumber’s putty and tastes faintly of gut-scented butter or pressed liposuction. The fat clings to the roof of my mouth with the oleaginous insistence of dentist’s wax.

…Nothing I have eaten or heard of being eaten here prepared me for the arrival of the veal kidneys en brochette. Somehow the heat had welded them together into a gray, suppurating renal brick. It could be the result of an accident involving rat babies in a nuclear reactor. They don’t taste as nice as they sound.

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Filed Under: Portland Food and Restaurant News and Discussion

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Jill-O says

    June 10, 2011 at 5:38 pm

    Damn, that’s funny. Thanks for posting that…I’ll be giggling all night.

    I think I own a “labially pink tablecloth”…and now I will never be able to think about it any other way, thanks again. ;o)

    Reply
  2. johnny says

    June 10, 2011 at 7:14 pm

    Nice!

    Reply
  3. Joisey says

    June 10, 2011 at 7:43 pm

    Sounds like the reviewer dropped out of med school before pursuing the journo thing.

    Reply
    • Food Dude says

      June 10, 2011 at 7:55 pm

      We were thinking the same thing!

      Reply
  4. Andrew Williamson says

    June 11, 2011 at 9:17 am

    Sounds suspiciously like A A Gill

    Reply
  5. DinahDavis says

    June 13, 2011 at 8:21 pm

    OMG, where IS this place? I’m just asking so I never, ever go there.

    Reply
  6. Heidi Yorkshire says

    June 17, 2011 at 8:04 am

    FYI, L’Ami Louis is one of the most celebrated, old-school, idiotically overpriced restaurants in Paris, and it’s obvious that the reviewer is laying it on. It’s hilarious writing, especially in the context of the reverence in which this joint is held.

    Reply

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