I came across Stéphane Martin as the featured chef in a trade journal ad for the Pacojet – a device I hadn’t even heard of until a couple of months ago. A Pacojet is basically a supercharged food processor with an added twist: it can process deep-frozen food, producing microscopically smooth sorbets and mousses that shout the flavor of a fruit or vegetable from the rooftops, right there on your tongue. If it weren’t for the price (I’ve seen $3,450 quoted for the basic system), every tyro chef’s kitchen would have one. You can be sure there’s one in every professional kitchen worth its salt. Google it and eat your heart out.

Martin’s eponymous restaurant is a bit of a trek for us central Paris dwellers, but it is in a nice, shop-filled bit of the 15th arrondissement, only a short walk from the Métro stop. The room is welcoming, with an imposing padded bar, deep terracotta walls decorated with fake book spines and unobtrusive artwork.

The tables – a soothing mix of large round tables for four or six and smaller, square ones for twosomes or foursomes – are intelligently spaced and set at different angles, so you’re not sitting in your neighbor’s lap, even though some of them are fairly close together. The front room filled up pretty quickly, but the noise levels stayed well within the comfort zone, somewhere between hushed and raucous.

This is a non-smoking restaurant – which, along with the quality of the food, no doubt explains the conspicuous percentage of non-French speakers among the local diners, many of whom, judging by the amount of cheek-kissing of the attractive serving staff, seem to be regulars.

Almost as soon as we were seated, the waitress brought us a little appetizer of spicy, North African olives and whatnot to kick-start our taste buds as we surveyed the menu and wine list. As soon as the order was dispatched to the kitchen (tiny – I had a peep on the way to check out the rest rooms, which were as clean as you could wish, but down a flight of stairs that are daunting for anyone, not just the wheelchair-bound), the waitress came back with another amuse-bouche appetizer. This was a creamy, slightly smoky spread of cod and monkfish containing crunchy bits of raw vegetables, including sweet green peppers, to be eaten on wafer-thin, deliciously toasted slices of Martin’s house-baked bread, of which he is justly proud. This inventive way of not wasting leftovers is an initiative to be warmly saluted.

My friend Aidan had the seasonal asparagus with green pepper, served with a pat of red onion jam, whose tartness nicely complemented the sweet, juicy spears without overpowering them. I had zeroed in on the ragoût de sot l’y laisse et morilles servi en cocotte as soon as I saw it. The sot l’y laisse, (a quaint expression, which might translate as “the bit that idiots leave on the carcass”), is known in English as the “oyster,” the choice bit of flesh on the spoon-shaped bit of a bird’s backbone. Martin serves these with fragrant morel mushrooms in one of those tiny cast-iron cooking pots, swimming in the plain cream sauce they were cooked in to develop their markedly different textures and flavors.

I followed this with a Southeast Asian-inspired cod steak cooked in a banana leaf, accompanied by bok choy and a palate-pleasing sesame sauce. This was lucky in a way, as the fish was seriously overcooked – the only low note of the evening and my deserved comeuppance for eating an endangered species. Aidan chose a simple duck breast served with grenaille, bite-sized potatoes. The meat was lush, the outside fat seared to perfection, the rest a feast of tenderness, texture and taste.

And so to dessert, which is where we get back to the Pacojet, because Aidan’s rich moelleux au chocolat with candied orange peel came with a “pacotized” verbena sorbet, while my prettily presented slices of caramelized pear were graced by cinnamon ice cream. The consistency of the two ices was very similar, as smooth as a conman’s patter, but the resemblance stops there. Each was the pure, ice-cold essence of its main ingredient. The rich chocolate cake was truly divine, while my sliced, caramelized pear was as fine a dessert as I’ve eaten in a while.

We drank an Alsace pinot noir from the house of Hugel. This very honorable bottle held up its fruity, flowery end very well throughout the meal. Among the last to leave, we emerged onto the street feeling at peace with the world, giving thanks that we had been privileged to spend an evening in the company of such an all-round accomplished chef and his crew.

Richard Hesse

Stéphane Martin: 67, rue des Entrepreneurs, 75015 Paris. Tel: 01 45 79 03 31. Closed Sunday and Monday. Métro: Commerce or Charles Michels. Fixed price menu: €35. A la carte: €50-60.

© 2007 Paris Update