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ReviewChapeau

Page history last edited by Mark P 15 years, 3 months ago

Chapeau! Review

 

Chapeau! provided an enjoyable experience. Its best features were things we normally consider accessories: an entertaining and friendly chef, good wine, good bread and butter, and a good dessert. In contrast, the main dishes were not particularly notable. Most dishes had some good aspect, though as a whole they generally were only okay. Many consisted of items that, while decent on their own, didn't work well together.

 

When we arrived, the chef was talking to a couple in front of the restaurant. He greeted us warmly and asked whether we were the party of four for which he had reservations. (There was only one open table inside.) When I admitted we were but had only three, he chided us, saying that we'd better e-mail our fourth later about how good it was and what he missed. Later, we got to interact with the chef again when he delivered our wine. He's a fun guy. For instance, as he opened the wine, he said, smiling, "If you don't like it, I'll drink it." He brought a small glass with him to try the wine along with the person who ordered it. Even later, when we left the restaurant, he jotted outside to catch us and warmly wished us goodbye, reminding us to e-mail our missing fourth person to tell him about the evening. (He's got a good memory.) Well, consider his wish fulfilled. :)

 

The chef's character infuses everything else is the restaurant as well. It's not simply the quirkiness of the name: chapeau means hat, yet with the exclamation mark it means, roughly, wow. (It's true; I looked it up.) There's also the fun wine quotes at the beginning of the huge binder listing wines. And, on the page of the binder for good red wines for around $30, there's the message, "If you can't find a wine on this page, that means I didn't do my job." Even the check had its own quirk, displaying the message:

"You have been served

by: <someone's name>"

(Yes, the line break was were I displayed it.)

 

Regarding the wine, the bottle of red we ordered, a Domaine Coteaux des Travers from the village of Rasteau, was very good. We had asked our waitress for a recommended and she'd looked over the list of dishes we ordered and said, "ah, sweetbreads," and immediately told us to order this one. It was surprisingly simple for a red wine. With a nice smell and unassertive flavors, it was just plain nice. One person really liked it. And a nice bonus, despite being opened and getting oxidized for the length of the meal, it held up well. Poured into huge wine glasses.

 

The bread, served warm, was definitely good quality: nicely soft and with just the right thickness of crust. The fact that the butter was served soft further added to this complimentary treat.

 

An amuse bouche of cauliflower soup, supposedly with white truffle oil, arrived shortly after the bread. It's was very good, rich and buttery. One person that doesn't normally like cauliflower liked the dish. One person that usually doesn't like truffles liked this dish. I think that's because the truffles were so subtle as to be practically non-existent.

 

Now, onto the dishes we ordered, which generally got less enthusiastic endorsements than items already described.

 

One appetizer, the "mesculen salad," demonstrates a property of many dishes of this meal: many items were decent but the dish as a whole didn't come together. The salad was decent, tossed as it was with a sweet mustard dressing. Some complained the dressing tasted cheap like low-end honey mustard, but near the end of the dish we discovered and all agreed that it worked really well with the grapes that came on the plate. The salad also came with some fried camembert. It was decent, but didn't go with the salad at all. Furthermore, the salad came with some walnut bread. It was fine, but also didn't go with the salad, though it did go reasonably well with the cheese.

 

The warm brie, our other appetizer, didn't thrill us either. This dish consisted of a number of items we had trouble identifying. As near as we could tell, it was a salad with good dressing under something like a potato pancake, mixed with pieces of dried apricot, which was in turn topped with some bread. There wasn't anything wrong with the dish, yet nothing about it tasted great and it seemed like a random assortment of items.

 

We ordered sweetbreads, which, as we educated one of us, are not sweet breads but rather glands of an animal, as one of our entrees. Unlike some other dishes, this one came together. It consisted of a truffley and garlicky mixture of rich chunks of meat, each covered with something that seemed like skin, along with mushrooms, potatoes, and carrots. Our favorite part of the dish wasn't the sweetbreads themselves but rather the flavor they gave the vegetables and the way the vegetables complemented each other. Our friend that's sensitive to and disliking of truffles didn't like the dish for obvious reasons.

 

We also got an order of bacon wrapped pork tenderloin, served surrounded by mashed parsnips, which acted as a moat keeping out a very rich dark sauce, some green stuff, and a few scattered french fries. We definitely liked the pork, especially with the bacon, and felt it worked well with the parsnips. But we didn't like the sauce and it didn't match anything on the dish. Nor did the fries appeal to us, but that may be because they all were sitting in the sauce.

 

Our third entree was a french classic, a cassoulet, served piping hot. Comparing entrees as wholes, this was our favorite, though not by much as it still didn't greatly excite us. The cassoulet contained cannellini beans, a sausage (lamb?), and a duck leg, topped with a bit of bread crumbs. The duck leg -confit according to the menu- was really good and stood heads above of the other, simply fine, components of the dish.

 

For dessert, we shared a good warm chocolate cake with an embedded banana flambeed in rum within it (the menu said so and that indeed was the flavor) alongside raisin ice cream and caramel sauce. The cake, smelling newly baked and with very gooey insides, was quite good, definitely above average. The bites with rum and banana were tasty, though, sadly, there were few such bites. The caramel sauce on the side was good enough that someone explicitly commented on it. The only negative to the dish was the simply bizarre raisin ice cream.

 

Chapeau! is located in a quiet residential neighborhood, its dining room secluded from the restaurant's entrance by a dark curtain. Inside, it was crowded, with tables literally six inches from each other. This was so close, I could easily hear the conversation at the next table, though, as it was in a foreign language, I couldn't understand it. The decor evoked nature, with tan walls, a green frieze of ivy leaves, and a simple yellow rose in a vase at our table. The latter fit better here than did the red rose on our table at South Park Cafe, the French restaurant from last week.

 

The total was $36/person including tax and tip but not including drinks.

 

Original Announcement

 

This Wednesday around 8:00pm, since it's the week of a particular person's birthday and he tends to like French food, we'll head to Chapeau! in the outer richmond.

http://bistrochapeau.citysearch.com/

 

As always, please tell me if you are coming!

 

Comments from Other Attendees

 

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