One of my favorites from the other place, duck confit and sausage with braised savoy cabbage ($18.75), is here and even better than I remembered it. I still could use a little more of the exquisite cabbage, but the current sausage is garlicky and great, the confit is done nicely, and there are oven-fried potatoes as well. Added since my visit is a “Lamb Cassoulet Bean Stew, Grilled Garlic Sausage and Bacon” ($14.75), taking advantage of the same confit duck, garlic sausage, and bacon, and adding cubes of lamb. Unfortunately it was based on a tomato sauce, so the white beans did not fully soften (due to the acidity). Besides, tomato sauce distracts from the meaty-fatty-beany-spicy quality of what ought to be the world’s greatest dish of baked beans.
The surprise of the evening was calves’ liver and onions ($14.50), something else one used to get in French restaurants because no one would cook it at home. Here the liver was tender and flavorful, especially with a lot of beautifully and fully caramelized onions and three slices of bacon.
The wine list is mostly French with some good bottles in the $20s, but we were a non-drinking crowd. Tea ($2.75) is served as bags of Harney & Sons teas, which come in a silk purse and a pot of hot water. Our night, there were no herbal or decaf teas, however. We did have a very reasonable latte ($5.25) and good coffee and decaf (both $2).
This is important because dessert is the real bargain course. But you must stick to simple things like the chocolate mousse ($5), which is perhaps too airy but smooth and delicious. The crème brûlée ($5.50) is simple, classic, and reliable, with a shortbread cookie for added crunch. And you should order ahead the soufflé ($7) — recently praline with a chunky apple sauce. It’s light and sweet and fabulous. But the ménage à poire ($7) should have been a good pear poached in red wine, or maybe that and the pear sorbet, definitely not the micro-tarte, which was over-caramelized and burnt. The tarte Tatin, while a travesty, isn’t awful, especially if you like the tart richness of crème fraîche. The pastry, however, was not special.
Service is good despite the difficult layout: the tables are too close together and diners enter a wasted room, thread through a bottleneck that is also the kitchen door, and only then reach the dining room. Rouge had the same design, and I don’t know why it hasn’t been corrected. The dining room is redone, now in a lighter yellow than Rouge’s bordello-red scheme, with a lot of mirrors and some framed art. The bare-brick wall and wood floors remain, reflecting lots of noise despite acoustic tile on the ceiling that holds the soundtrack (operatic pop) until about 7:30 pm.
I recently reviewed Bouchée as a well-done chain version of a ’50s French restaurant, which might lead people to move up to chef-owned and more modern French restaurants. Petit Robert, although chef-owned, is actually one location ahead of Bouchée, and may actually be even more at the entry level, cheaper and more old-fashioned, despite a few wisps of Asian fusion on a few dishes. So maybe the future is not upscale but down, like ’50s France, with an inexpensive bistro of standardized menu on every corner. Worse things could happen.
