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| - As an Old Vegas experience, Pamplemousse gets five stars. As a place for a good French dinner, it gets about two. Wow, I can't remember a place I wanted to like so much but just couldn't. First, what I liked, or loved, really ... with restaurant corporations, never-there celebrity chefs, and nosebleed prices now the norm on the Strip, it's great that there are still remnants of Old Vegas. By Old Vegas I mean places with individual owners, where the staff knows your name, and you're a regular (and treated like royalty) after a second visit. The décor was adorable, camp done just right. Also, the service couldn't have been better. The server on duty tonight appreciated every single customer who walked in the door. Little touches mean a lot, like when another server dropped what he was doing, turned around, and opened the door for me and thanked me on my way out.
Unfortunately, in the end every restaurant must be judged on its food. If you're hoping for fine French cuisine, you need to go elsewhere. I got the 5-course epicurean menu, and I'll go item-by-item. First, a basket of crudités. The server claimed they were fresh from their backyard garden. Hmm, I'm guessing more like fresh from Costco or whatever distributor, but at least the veggies were fresh. The Dijon vinaigrette offered as dipping sauce was tasty. The complimentary bread was OK (dry, crusty French bread, which tends to get too dry after a few hours here in the desert), but the butter was terrific. If you think butter is butter, I disagree. A lot of restaurants cheap out and offer low-quality butter nowadays because bread & butter is a complimentary item. The pate of the day was duck, and it was fine, not bad but nothing special either. Now for the downer of the meal: frog legs provencal, which I ordered as an additional course. Wow, they were traumatically bad. Frog legs are a favorite of mine, especially since they're rarely offered. These frog legs were the worst I've ever had. They had that watery flavorlessness that's a dead giveaway of food that's been frozen far too long. And despite being sautéed in a provencal (butter, LOTS of garlic, white wine) sauce, the frog legs somehow managed to absorb none of the sauce's flavors. Think of chicken breast frozen for a decade, then boiled and served with no salt or seasoning. Obviously, I wish I hadn't ordered it, but my guess is there are a few other items on the menu that are as bad, or almost as bad. Between courses, I got a grapefruit sorbet with champagne float as a palate cleanser, delicious, but not enough to erase the trauma of the frog legs. On to the main, the duck two ways with orange sauce was OK, but just OK. The breast was rare to medium-rare, tasted OK, then again I've never been a big fan of duck breast. The leg quarter confit was nothing special, and duck confit is perhaps my favorite food on the planet. It wasn't bad, nothing like the traumatically bad frog legs, but it wasn't particularly good or flavorful either. And duck confit should never ever be lacking in flavor. The highlight of the meal was dessert, Belgian dark chocolate mousse. They prepare it the classic French way, that is, without cream whipped into the mousse itself (although they add a bit on top as garnish). I never like chocolate unless it's the flown-in-from-Switzerland-yesterday quality, yet I loved this chocolate mousse (even though I doubt it was in Switzerland at any point in its existence, much less yesterday).
If you want top-notch French cuisine, go to Joel Robuchon. But if you want to experience what Old Vegas must have been like back when "da boys" ran the joint, go to Pamplemousse. It's not the greatest food, but it is a great experience, and for about 1/4 what you'll spend at Robuchon. So the next time your "cousine paysanne" comes to town and asks to go to a fancy French rest-OH-rahnt, take her to Pamplemousse. Your wallet will be profoundly grateful, and ta cousine paysanne will never be the wiser.
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