Europe

This restaurant’s unusual name comes from the five-course menu, which offers two choices each for starter, main course and dessert, with one selection each for the intervening soup and cheese. Chef Tom Kitching’s menu is always changing, but representative dishes include a rich mushroom risotto with a sauce of morels, Madeira and white truffle; and a flavorful beef “curry” with slow-cooked fillet, artichokes, cauliflower, potatoes, saffron onions and pineapple confit. The restaurant is set in a restored Georgian townhouse and is elegantly decorated, the most striking element being a drawing room mural that is a detail from a Caravaggio painting.

Despite the facts that it resembles a small, mirrored railroad car and that diners sit at high stools before a communal table, this has become the toughest reservation on the Left Bank because of the superb cooking of young chef David Toutain. Working in a tiny open kitchen, he composes a new tasting menu almost daily, and the dishes reflect his culinary creativity and flawless technical skills. Expect a suite of beautiful edible miniatures such as a slow-cooked egg with new garlic cream and lemon-verbena foam; dressed crab with candied grapefruit and a rich consommé of North Sea shrimp; griddled razor shell clams, squid and zucchini in lavender foam with yuzu cream and dill flowers; and veal in black-olive tapenade with grilled shallots. Service is flawless, and it’s a good idea to order the well-chosen wine pairings.

The famously healthy cooking of Crete, with its use of olive oil, vegetables, fruit and yogurt, is popular in Athens, and Alatsi is the place to sample this cuisine at its finest. Watch for chef Dimitris Skarmoutsos’ dolmadakia (grape leaves stuffed with rice and Cretan herbs); gamopilafo, a pilaf made with chicken and lamb in a rich stock and ewe’s milk butter; snails boubouristi (fried in olive oil, vinegar and rosemary); and cabbage rice with smoked pork.