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| - On the way to Zion National Park for our 10th anniversary, my husband and I thought it'd be fun to stay a night at the Aria just to break up the drive from Peoria where we live. We always stay at the Aria, and I've seen so many photos and reviews that I was inspired to try this place for dinner. I'll admit, it was an odd night for a celebration, a Wednesday night at around just after 9pm, when it's close to closing I'm assuming. The restaurant was fairly open, except for a few people grabbing drinks at the bar, and maybe two other couples and one small group. There was no hostess originally at the entrance, so we awkwardly looked around. The friendly bartender assured us someone would soon be with us, and eventually after maybe 10 minutes, we were rescued and finally guided to a table.
Our waitress was super nice. She grabbed my cocktail order, Le Peche Mode. Cute name, so the cocktail just had to be good... It had Hennessy, peach cream, lemon, ginger and mint. I'm not the biggest fan of mint, but luckily it was subtle. I enjoyed it much more than the Lime in Da Abricot, which also had cognac, apricot purée, and mint. While waiting for my cocktail to make its presence, we were given a French bread baguette in a paper bag lightly toasted and served with non melted butter. It wasn't pre sliced so we made a hell of a mess breaking it apart and sharing it. Our bad...
The Escargots Bardot consisted of wild burgundy snails wrapped in puff pastries, and they were toasted with hazelnuts sprinkled on top and delicately bathed in chartreuse-garlic butter. The pastry was very light and perfect. We really loved this appetizer.
The Steak Tartare had freshly ground prime filet with egg yolk served with gaufrette potato chips. This was my husband's choice, because he is a sucker for most tartares, and this one did not disappoint. The salty chips fit well with the raw filet meat.
Since I'm a huge fan of Branzino type fish, it was a no brained for me to try the Loup de Mer Au Fenouil. It had roasted Mediterranean Sea bass, caramel iced lemon, fennel, and fingerling potatoes. It looked exactly like the photo in our hotel room advertisement for Bardot. It was also perfectly done not only in aesthetics but in taste.
My husband ordered the double cut pork chop. It was oak smoked pork with bacon lardons, root veggies, horseradish potato purée and grain mustard bearer bland. Funny enough, this was also featured on the advertisement for Bardot in our hotel room, but I swear, we ordered these 2 entrees without even seeing the advertisement. I just recognized the 2 entrees' photo when we returned to the room!
The food is absolutely close to phenomenal especially as far as how the escargot and the Loup de Mer. Our waitress was really good and friendly especially for working late on a Wednesday night, a slower night. I think what got to me was the long waits we encountered. We waited a while to sit down and there seemed like too much time between dishes. If it had been a weekend, then I'd totally understand, but it really didn't seem like that were that many people there. There was a photographer there too with an assistant, nabbing memorable photos of the night. It was just slightly on the pushy side with posing our photos for us, and then they returned at the end of dinner to present us with prints of our photos. It was around $100 or so to get the prints and that's only a select few of the prints. She was right... it was our 10th anniversary so we were suckered into getting some.. It was still awkward though.
If we return, it'd just be to grab a cocktail and maybe some of the escargot pastries again.
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