Rob P.
Yelp
To celebrate my birthday, since I'm obviously worth it, I picked an expensive restaurant that I hadn't tried before. This is a French restaurant. I was in France right before Covid hit the United States, in February 2020. I ate a lot of French food. This had better be good. I mean, it's my birthday!
And, it was good. Very good. It looks like a delightful French country house when you approach. How charming. It did feel a bit like I was back in Paris. I know: shut up about going to France, Rob! I probably shouldn't tell you about Rome, too, on the same trip.
Anyway, Cuisine is very good. But, not without its quirks. We ordered duck fat french fries. Of course we did: I'm not made of stone. And, indeed, the fries were spectacularly crunchy and flavorful. They were served with some weird, obviously "French" sauce: a sort of balsamic flavored sauce. Not bad, but we wanted ketchup.
WE WERE TOLD THEY HAD TO MAKE THE KETCHUP. Oh, how very "French" of you! We've been through this before, and got a weird tomato sauce thing. This time, what they brought tasted great. Then, I realized, I was eating Heinz ketchup. There's no way the kitchen could have replicated the exact combination of vinegar, spices, and smooth processing to deliver a sauce that tasted exactly like the only ketchup you ever want to have with fries. How pretentious to assume that we would want only a sauce that wasn't ketchup, because we are so sophisticated. This really put me off.
The real shame is that everything else was good to great. The Arancini was bland, but the lobster bisque is beautifully flavorful. Not much meat - there never is - but incredible flavor. I didn't mind that they used lump crab meat, but then what part of the soup makes it a lobster bisque? The brussels sprouts are perfectly cooked, lightly fried, and not greasy at all. Delicious.
I would gladly max out my credit card to eat nothing but the Duck Breast, roasted with honey and coriander, with a mini duck meat pie and red wine braised strawberries. Some people say duck breast is like steak. It is, but better, more luxurious.
The Chilean Seabass actually is Chillean Seabass, and not some imposter. It's wonderfully sweet, but the portion is tiny. Give us adult portions, for the price I'm paying.
And, that's the thing that lowers the score a bit. For the price I'm paying, I want to be accommodated reasonably. I'm not asking for anything crazy. Just have ketchup ready when a customer orders fries, and don't make a pretentious moment out of it.