Tasting Garance limousine fillet is “being transported to a countryside full of flavors”

En the heart of the Parisian district of the ministries, a stone’s throw from the Invalides, the restaurant Garance stands out as an embassy in its own way. You just have to taste his limousine fillet, either raw in tartar or skillfully cooked on olive pits, to be transported to a countryside full of flavors and aromas. This fresh heifer meat comes from the La Thibarderie family farm in Magnac-Laval, in Limousin, created by the grandfather of restaurant owner and sommelier Guillaume Muller.

Since he opened his elegant Garance in 2012, he has mainly processed products grown by his cousin Charles-Arthur Muller here, on the 160-hectare property where there is an orchard, a vegetable garden with some 70 varieties of vegetables and a forty aromatic herbs, a hundred limousines, pigs and various poultry. The whole lives in a coherent ecosystem. And, when the raw materials do not come from the farm, they come from the surrounding area, especially for the Salers cows, the cheeses or the lambs.

But the heifer tenderloin does indeed come from one of his animals fed precisely with a mixture of five untreated cereals. “We raise the animal with care for four years before sending it to the restaurant”, says Guillaume Muller. His restaurant consumes four to five a year. Without maturation to preserve the freshness of its flesh, the meat is meltingly tender, bright in color and well-distributed fat. It is this piece chosen for its soft texture that the chef Clément Pécot prefers to work by skilfully ordering different cooking times: “First, I quickly cook the fillet in a pan with butter, then in the oven, then on the grill. Finally, I let it sit for as long as it took to cook it,” he delivers.

The cook then cuts the piece into a square like a dressmaker cuts fabric for a fashion show. The piece is accompanied by mole poblano, a skilful and spicy mixture like a mustard, completely personal that the chef elaborates over several weeks from various herbs and dried fruits. And then, in the same color as the tenderloin, slices of smoked beet provide a crunch that ends up framing this definitely earthy dish. All that remains is to choose, from the magnificent wine list, one of the beautiful bottles selected by Guillaume Muller, who has already proven himself as a sommelier with Alain Passard at l’Arpège.