Monsieur Paul, EPCOT French Pavilion

Monsieur Paul is a French restaurant located in the French Pavilion of EPCOT on the second floor of the building that also houses the restaurant Chefs de France.  Monsieur Paul is the restaurant that hosts the French Regional Lunches and the Grand Marnier Mixology Series during the Intenational Food & Wine Festival.  Chefs de France hosts the Parisian Breakfast during the festival, so we have fond memories of both establishments.  Because we enjoy the French Regional Lunches so much, we decided to return to Monsieur Paul for an evening dinner.

We had decided before going to Monsieur Paul that we would just enjoy the dinner no matter the cost.  Actually, the prices at Monsieur Paul are similar to any of the better restaurants at Disney World, but our decision would factor in to the bottle of wine that we enjoyed with the meal.

On to the dinner itself.  We started off with French bread and butter.  Frankly, I think I could make a meal of that all by itself, but am smart enough to know I need to leave room for the entree and dessert.

My husband ordered the Roasted Duck Breast and I had the Grilled Beef Tenderloin.

Roasted Duck Breast.  On the right side of the plate is cabbage stuffed with braised oxtail.

…

Grilled Beef Tenderloin with mushroom crust and Bordelaise sauce.  That’s wonderful mashed potatoes in the ramekin to the right of the knife.

Of course, we had to have some wine with this meal.  We decided on a Bordeaux from Chateau Lynch-Bages, specifically Echo de Lynch-Bages 2010.  Now, this bottle of wine was well over $100 and it was good.  However, we’re not certain the wine was that much better than some of the other wines we’ve had that are less expensive.  We enjoy our wine, but perhaps our palate still needs to mature.  We’ve always wanted to enjoy an expensive bottle of wine, so this fit the bill. I guess we can scratch this one off of our bucket list.

The wine, a Bordeaux.

The meal was scrumptious.  The roasted duck was great, but I’m kind of partial to the beef tenderloin.  It almost melted in my mouth and yes, the wine did go really well with it.  The wine went really well with the duck as well.  I find that kind of interesting.  However, we weren’t finished yet with our dinner.  We saved room for dessert, of course!  We both had the same dessert, a warm flourless chocolate cake with, among other things, chocolate passion fruit ganache, and some vanilla ice cream.  Makes your mouth water, doesn’t it?

Just a little simple chocolate cake with ice cream, right?

Well, it was a great evening.  We will return to this restaurant again, although we may not spend as much on wine as we did with this meal.  But, no regrets.  Can’t wait for the 2014 French Regional Lunches.  We actually have reservations for two different French regions for 2014!