Lucas Carton is one of a handful of legendary temples of Paris fine dining. It first opened as a restaurant in the 1860s (!!) and, through a number of changes (chef, restaurant name, fashion, the world around it, basically!), has remained one of the City of Light’s most elegant tables. Of course, part of its appeal comes from its stunning location, on the place de la Madeleine, facing the entrance of the neo-classical church of the same name. Then there is its magnificent carved art-nouveau woodwork (installed in the 1880s and now a National Landmark) that gives dining there the feeling of of being transported to the Belle Époque. 
As a young cook working in Seattle in the 1990s, I had read about Lucas Carton’s chef, Alain Senderens, who had not only kept the restaurant’s three Michelin stars (first earned in the 1930’s) since his promotion to chef in 1985, but was also reputed for having trained some of the most important young chefs in France. He was a legend. So, when we began to make plans for a trip to Paris, I was keen to make Lucas Carton my first-ever Michelin three star dining experience (note that we had dined at restaurant Maximin in Nice in 1990, which had two stars at that time, as the guests of Sheila’s uncle and beloved Seattle culinary figure Joe McDonnal…but then, that’s a whole different story). Months in advance, I called the restaurant from Seattle and made a reservation for dinner – the general knowledge was that securing a seat in a three-star required booking well in advance.
We stayed in the 12th arrondissement, near the marché at place d’Aligre, east of the Bastille, which is to say, a fair distance from the place de la Madeleine. On the evening of our dinner, decked out in our best kit, me in a suit and tie (in those days, going to a top flight restaurant in Paris was the moral equivalent of going to the opera or a funeral…you got dressed up), we walked to the place de la Bastille to catch a cab to the restaurant. The cabstand at the Bastille is busy always, and when we arrived there was a queue of about 20 people waiting (this is pre-Uber, remember). As we waited, a couple of panhandlers came down the queue asking for change. On hearing my American accent, one of the two proceeded to go off on a tear about how he disagreed with America’s actions in Iraq (this was the early 90’s so the First Gulf War was still fresh in everyone’s mind) and saying that George Bush was a war criminal. I tried to assure him that we agreed with his point of view, with very little success. Meanwhile, the queue advanced slowly and the time was running toward the time of our reservation. We finally thought better of waiting and decided to try the nearby metro instead. Of course, the metro in Paris always takes longer than one expects, so we found ourselves emerging from the metro at Madeleine fully 30 minutes late for our reservation. Breaking a sweat, we finally reached the front door of the restaurant, where I apologized for our lateness to the Maître d’Hôtel who greeted us. “This is Paris” he replied with a smile, ignoring my halting French, “one is never late!”
The first thing that struck me about Lucas Carton was the immense flower arrangement just inside the entrance. Sitting on a table, the bouquet of flowers towered above the dining room, its highest blooms fully ten feet above the floor and was nearly that wide. This bouquet set the tone for the entire experience. It seemed to say “relax, spread out, we are not pressed. Prepare yourself for grand gestures”. The Maître d’ took our coats and ushered us to a beautiful table for four so that we could sit side by side on the banquet; the restaurant was the show, so why not have a good view! The waiter brought menus, mine with prices, Sheila’s without, as if to say “why should she worry her pretty little head about prices, he will be paying”. For her first course, with uncanny aim, she chose the most expensive dish on the menu, a salad of lobster, celery root and black truffle. When it arrived, it surely must have included an entire lobster, and a snow storm of shaved fresh truffles. Of my choices, I recall a roasted loin of lamb raised in Provence, served with ratatouille and polenta, excellent.
One of the nicest surprises came when ordering wine. If you have ever dined at a starred restaurant, you know that the wine list will lean heavily to bottles with prices north of 300 dollars, and if you look toward Bordeaux or Burgundy, you can quickly pass 1000 euros (in those days, that would have been 5500 francs, which seems even more expensive). So when I asked the wine steward for a recommendation to go with our main courses, I was happily surprised that he recommended a modest half-bottle of Bandol, which was more in the 50 euro range. He said his family came from that region so this wine was a particular favorite of his (or maybe he sensed that this meal was a big splurge for us and decided not to pad the bill). PS the Bandol was great with our meal.
We were dining on a weeknight, so the dining room was not very full, with maybe half the tables occupied. At one table, clear across the room, was seated a couple who loudly informed their waiter that they were “not from America, honey, we are from Texas”. This spoken by a woman who was either drunk or very loud or both. She was, as the French say, “of a certain age” and dressed in a red strapless leather mini dress. Throughout the night, she became more and more inebriated, and had to stand up often to go to the bathroom. In this era, when a lady went to the bathroom at a restaurant of this caliber in Paris, she was escorted to the door of the bathroom by a server. At Lucas Carton, the bathrooms are reached via a rather tight spiral staircase (built in 1860, remember), so the task was complicated. And not made easier by the fact that the woman kept losing her red stiletto-heeled shoes when she walked. At one point, Sheila noticed that, reflected in a ill-placed mirror wall, we could see members of the staff in the service area joking about her and wagering if she as going to fall over! The moral is that Americans in Paris have a great advantage: Parisians expect Americans to be like this woman, loud, boorish and entitled. So if you are polite and try to speak French, in short, if you are not a tactless boor, you are, well served by the contrast and and Parisians are grateful for it.
For dessert, I remember that Sheila ordered a mille-feuille au vanille, one of the classics of French patisserie. I am not generally a fan of French pastries, of the sort that fill the shelves or patisseries across Paris, as I find them often too sweet and more designed to look good than to taste good. Give me a slab of some grandmotherly dessert any day. However, this mille-feuille challenged this smug generalization: perfectly simple and perfectly executed in every detail, crisp, only slightly sweet pastry, rich, smooth cream lusty with Madagascar vanilla, just lightly dusted with confectioners sugar, it was proof that there is a reason why some dishes are classics. I have never tasted a better mille-feuille since.
Three and a half hours after our arrival, we settled the bill got ready to leave. It was expensive, like a month’s rent expensive, but in the years since, we have spent more for meals we enjoyed less. That is the trick with fine dining at the very high end: it costs a ton, so expectations are sky high and one is very unforgiving of any error (rightly so). It is a high priced gamble, and I have as often been disappointed in starred restaurants as delighted. But when it is done right, when the kitchen and the dining room are both hitting on all cylinders, well, there is nothing better. When we rolled out of Lucas Carton, well fed, warm of belly and comfortably tipsy, into the night only to be face to face with the église de la Madeleine all lit up like Christmas, with all of Paris ahead, one doesn’t mind the price.
End note: In the early 2000’s, Chef Senderens grew tired of the conservatism and exorbitant prices, that, in his view, were required to satisfy Michelin examiners and maintain stars. These days, I tend to agree with this point of view and our trips to starred restaurants have become very rare. At Senderens’ urging, Lucas Carton gave up its Michelin stars, underwent a remodel that added modern touches to the classically elegant dining room, and moved its menu toward a “bistrot de luxe” model. The restaurant was renamed “Senderens” in recognition to his legacy. Chef Senderens retired in 2013 and the restaurant is once again called Lucas Carton.