Franco File
When the economy starts cooking, new French restaurants often follow suit, and these days they’re sprouting across Texas like champignons after a spring pluie. Here are sixteen places that give a whole new meaning to “stock options.”
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AUSTIN
In Austin you could organize a progressive dinner with a course at each of the city’s major French restaurants and travel no more than two miles between soupe and nuts. The most casual of the group is Chez Nous, a real French bistro owned by real French people that is so good and reasonably priced I must mention it even though it’s ancient—eighteen years old. The chicken crêpes I had at lunch were so delicious—pancakes as thin as handkerchiefs filled with breast meat and mushrooms in a classic, milky-rich béchamel sauce—that I took my friend the Cordon Bleu graduate there the next week to get her professional opinion. “Perfect,” she said as she speared a piece of duck breast, and then another and another. The kitchen, overseen by chef Eric Pelegrine, age 36, also knows what to do with seafood: Plump scallops in a rosemary-zapped sauce of white wine and goat cheese were like satin. The only things that weren’t up to par on lunch visits were leaden potato puffs and boring steamed broccoli.
Slightly higher on the ambition scale is Jean-Luc’s French Bistro, a small restaurant that peeps out on the street from the half-basement of a downtown office tower. Owned by Jean-Luc Salles, age 39, who is also the chef, it’s much more charming at night, when the low concrete ceiling beams disappear in the shadows and white tablecloths lend a touch of class. A small puff-pastry pizza of pheasant confit, caramelized leeks, and dabs of Texas goat cheese was a dynamic interplay of flavors—salty, sweet, and meaty. It was the hit of an evening that included an impeccably fresh, soufflé-light Dover sole roulade rolled around a rather boring parsnip purée and accompanied by a too-al dente but flavorful minced-potato “risotto.” For dessert, two of us attacked the giant chilled chocolate truffle, served with a raspberry purée and a pungent caramel cream, but the truffle was still standing when we finally waved the white flag.
Despite Sardine Rouge’s rather peculiar name, red sardines are nowhere to be found on its menu. Instead, jaunty little rows of them swim across the stained-glass mural up front, and frosted-glass sculptures of them hang from the arty light fixtures. The menu doesn’t stray too far from its French roots, though chefs Norbert Brandt, 46, and Jimmy Shuemake, 30, like to experiment, and Asian ingredients do show up. In fact, the best dish I’ve tried here was a lovely tuna filet in a wasabi-kissed beurre blanc. Casserole-baked pheasant, jazzed up with morels in a truffled, red wine-laced cream sauce, was like chicken potpie from heaven. But speaking of truffles, think twice before you order the cream of white-asparagus soup (a special); it was so overwhelmed by truffle essence that it almost made me swoon.
Just what is French and what isn’t? I’m sure that in twenty-first-century France, the local chefs are as global as they are in America. But when I’m eating French food in Texas, I want something more traditional, like—well, like the steak with a little nugget of bone marrow perched atop it that I ordered at Aquarelle, the newest French restaurant to hit Austin. What does marrow taste like? Pure fat, which it is. If you can countenance that, marrow is delicious. Cut it thin and eat a morsel with each bite of beef. An oasis of serenity in a converted house just off West Sixth, with buttercup-yellow walls, glossy white woodwork, and formal bouquets on the mantel, Aquarelle is French down to its fingertips. I was happy with what I tried from the menu of the 33-year-old chef, Jacques Richard. I liked my lovely rare steak (in a slightly separating bordelaise sauce), al dente baby vegetables, and a poached Bartlett pear fashionably attired in a crisp puff-pastry chemise with twin puddles of honey and a red-wine syrup. Not everything was perfect, but the restaurant was less than a week old when I visited.
FORT WORTH
After nibbling around Fort Worth and environs for a few days, I found myself wishing that Bistro Louise could be shoehorned into the Gallic category. Its grilled-salmon niçoise salad was fantastique but, unfortunately, the menu is largely Italian. That leaves two others, Saint-Emilion and Cacharel. Of the two, Saint-Emilion is the more approachable. The little old two-story brick house is simply and agreeably decorated with framed posters on white walls. Judging by the people waving at one another across the dining room, many customers are regulars. The dishes I sampled from the menu of chef Lawrence Klang, age 29, were pleasant enough. Sometimes they were a little bland—a stark white cauliflower soup proved so uncompelling, despite its swirl of dill oil and sprinkling of ossetra caviar, that I kept forgetting it was on the table—but usually they held my attention. A chef’s special terrine of foie gras with a salad of watercress sprouts was a successful and intriguing contrast in textures. One of the more interesting items was a special of (unevenly cooked) honey-glazed duck with a side dish of clove-scented date purée, sweet and spicy. Oddly, the most gorgeous dish was the most disastrous—a casserole colorfully lined with alternating matchsticks of carrot and turnip. Nearby diners peered enviously at my plate, but the contents of the casserole, touted as a yummy baked squab, turned out to be a very tough little bird.
The first clue that Arlington’s Cacharel is not of this century is Bach on the sound system. The second is the mint-green-and-peach color scheme. Even the open kitchen is behind glass (watching the chefs is like looking at fish in an aquarium). And yet this anomaly at the top of an office tower has an unmistakable authority: Our earnest young waiter was as proper as the steadfast tin soldier. The creation of 44-year-old chef Hans Bergmann, escargots Cacharel proved to be a glorious pile of snails, mushrooms, pecans, and red grapes in a mushroom herb butter sauce accompanied by a rectangle of crisp puff pastry. It was far more elaborate than I had expected, and frighteningly rich. As for my entrée, I can’t remember salmon that was more superbly fresh or perfectly cooked (just medium rare), enlivened by a dill-inflected champagne cream. Dessert, an all-but-levitating mocha soufflé, was perfection.
Aquarelle, 606 Rio Grande (512-479-8117). Dinner only; entrées $18-$30. Closed Sunday. AE, DS, MC, V.
Chez Nous, 510 Neches (512-473-2413). Crêpes and entrées $8-$14 at lunch, entrées $15.50-$23.50 at dinner. Closed Monday. AE, DC, MC, V.
Jean-Luc’s French Bistro, 705 Colorado (512-494-0033). Entrées $7.95-$9.95 at lunch, $17-$35 at dinner. Closed Monday. AE, DC, DS, MC, V.
Sardine Rouge, 311 W. Sixth (512-473-8642). Dinner only; entrées $19-$28. AE, DC, DS, MC, V.La Mirabelle, 17610 Midway at Trinity Mills (972-733-0202). Entrées $12.95-$18.95 at lunch, $18.95-$35 at dinner. Closed Sunday and Monday. MC, V.
Lavendou, 19009 Preston at Lloyd (972-248-1911). Entrées $8.95-$18.95 at lunch, $14.95-$22.95 at dinner. Closed Sunday. AE, CB, DC, DS, MC, V.
Le Paris Bistrot, 2533 McKinney (214-720-0225). Entrées $6-$12 at lunch, $6-$23 at dinner. AE, CB, DC, DS, MC, V.
Watel’s, 2719 McKinney (214-720-0323). Entrées $8-$12 at lunch, $15-$23 at dinner. AE, DC, MC, V.
Wé Oui, Crescent Court, McKinney at Maple (214-220-3990). Entrées $8-$14 at lunch, $13 and $18 at dinner. AE, DC, DS, MC, V.Cacharel, Brookhollow II Building, 2221 E. Lamar Boulevard, Arlington (817-640-9981). Entrées $8-$20 at lunch, $22-$40 at dinner. Closed Sunday. AE, CB, DC, DS, MC, V.
Saint-Emilion, 3617 W. Seventh St. (817-737-2781). Dinner only; entrées $21.75-$34.75. Closed Sunday and Monday. AE, CB, DC, DS, MC, V.Bistro Provence, 11920 Westheimer at Kirkwood (281-497-1122) and 13616 Memorial at Kirkwood (713-827-8008). Entrées $7.95-$22 at lunch, $8.50-$25 at dinner. Closed Sunday. AE, MC, V.
Cafe Descours, 1330 Wirt Road at Westview (713-681-8894). Dinner only; entrées $8.95-$19.50. Closed Sunday and Monday. AE, DS, MC, V.
Café Perrier, 4304 Westheimer at Mid Lane (713-355-4455). Entrées $8.50-$18.50 at lunch, $17.50-$29.50 at dinner. Closed Sunday. AE, DC, MC, V.Le Rêve, 152 E. Pecan (210-212-2221). Dinner only; entrées $22-$33. Closed Sunday and Monday. AE, DS, MC, V.
L’Etoile, 6106 Broadway (210-826-4551). Entrées $8.95-$17.95 at lunch, $17.95-$45.95 at dinner. Closed Sunday. AE, DC, MC, V.
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