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| - Worst French food I have ever tasted on my 47 years on this planet.
I had big hopes for this adorable little place. Yelp reviews looked pretty good, the place was quaint and it was a nice cool breezy evening in Scottsdale. The outdoor alfresco seating raised my hopes that this would at least be a delicious evening.
Apparently this place was recently named as one of the 10 best new restaurants in Phoenix by the not always trustworthy Phoenix Magazine - that's a laugh.
I happen to love French "bistro" style food, and the small number of menu choices here did seem to tick off some of the classics.
My wife and I met two of our "foodie" friends there who had eaten there before for lunch and who had said they liked the place.
There is a bit of a lighting issue outside - the little LED orange candle in the table was not enough light for any of us to read our menus, much less see the food. The waiter didn't have a flashlight so he passed around the LED at the center of the table. The chair I sat down in was extremely uncomfortable by the way - hard metal, with a deep crevice in the middle with no padding - just the feel of a large wire around your bottom. Not so good.
Our extremely good looking, gabby, and smooth talking waiter (Rick) seemed very familiar with the food and menu choices, and was almost trying a little too hard to impress us ("well the Jardiniere Salad is a deconstructed salad folks - lots of beets and heirloom tomatoes. There isn't much lettuce. You know what a deconstructed salad is don't you?"). His recitation of the food ingredients almost bordered on the goofy.
But that was the giveaway: I should have known from that early moment that this restaurant is 99% talk. And talk is cheap as they say. The horrible food here is another story.
I don't have time to get into all the details but let me say that the $10 "deconstructed salad" that my wife ordered had lots of lettuce and not ONE single heirloom tomato to be found - not one. Oops. It also tasted quite bland - no dressing to be found. Neither my wife nor I liked it at all. Bland and boring. Was it pretty? I don't know, we couldn't see it.
I will say the little cheese pastry puffs were tasty as a bread before dinner - actually I would rather have eaten a plate of these then the awful food that was yet to come.
My Gazpacho soup was too much like tomato sauce put in a food processor - heavy on the spiciness, and also too cloyingly sweet - it was mediocre at best. By the way kids, Gazpacho soup is a Spanish dish - not French, and certainly not bistro style. Oh well.
I ordered the duck served on a bed of white beans - and let me state with all honesty that this was by far the WORST duck I've ever had. Bottom line: this was yuck duck.
This was supposed to some kind of seared duck breast.
All I can tell you is that the duck was so so so undercooked that it was rubbery and impossible to slice even with a serrated knife. I had to use my phone to see the duck since it was near pitch black at the patio (all of us complained amongst ourselves about the lack of light). What I saw staring at me was literally raw meat. There was no charred or crispy skin either - just little slabs of raw duck meat.
If I wanted the tartare I would have ordered a tartare for gods sakes.
Frankly, the chef could have served this duck as a sushi dish it was so raw. It was not rare - it was raw. And the seasoning was also disappointing.
My wife had the steak frittes - a staple of any decent bistro. But Chef Porter messed this up too- instead of a nice flattened and tender cut of meat, what was served were little fat medallions of non tender meat with a too creamy peppercorn sauce. And guess what? Yup, the meat was rarer than rare - not medium as my wife clearly ordered, but more raw and literally inedible meat.
This Chef needs to get his act together - or go back to cooking school. Can you not cook a piece of meat sir? Can you not follow the order?
The frittes were also not traditional thin haystack or straw variety - too fat and chunky for this type of simple bistro dish.
The only good part of the meal were desserts the Grand Marnier Souffle and Citron (lemon) Tart were quite delicious I admit.
The puffy Souffle was airy and especially dense with ideal flavors of lemon, vanilla and it was cooked correctly and topped with a vanilla anglaise sauce.
But overall I would say I would pass on this stinker of a restaurant. Why spend over $125 per couple for mediocre French food? Perhaps our unsophisticated palates just can't appreciate the overrated talents of this chef - but we will all surely take our hard earned cash somewhere else.
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