L'Arpège is best known for Alain Passard's adventurous specialties -- no restaurant in the 7th serves better food. Across from the Musée Rodin in a residential neighborhood, L'Arpège has claimed the site of what for years was the world-famous L'Archestrate, where Passard worked in the kitchens. Amid a modern decor of etched glass, burnished steel, monochromatic oil paintings, and pear-wood paneling, you can enjoy specialties like a light couscous of vegetables and shellfish, lobster braised in the yellow wine of the Jura, pigeon roasted with almonds and honey-flavored mead, medallions of lobster with a rosemary-flavored sweet-and-sour sauce, and carpaccio of crayfish with a caviar-flavored sauce. While Alan Passard is loathe to include red meat on his menus, it does appear from time to time -- for example, Japan-derived Kobe beef, and superb venison in late autumn and early winter. But more and more, he focuses on fish, shellfish, poultry, and -- his current passion -- vegetables. These he elevates to levels unequalled by any other chef in Paris. The signature dessert is a candied tomato stuffed with 12 kinds of dried and fresh fruit and served with anise-flavored ice cream.