We went with high expectations; we left unfulfilled. Pigmon, trixie-pea, the Lovely Dining Companion, and I visited Cotes du Rhone last night and the best thing I can say about the experience is that it’s only a 10-minute walk from our house. We might make it again, but after last night, it’s hard to work up much enthusiasm.
As others have observed, they simply don’t have their hosting or serving acts together yet. We waited close to thirty minutes before being seated, despite arriving promptly for our 7:00 p.m. reservation. There is nowhere to wait except on the main dining floor and there were at least two fours and several other parties waiting simultaneously, making an already tight room even more so. And speaking as patrons who spent our evening sitting at one of the tables we were hanging over while waiting, it isn’t much fun to be seated in the waiting room.
We were told at one point that the busboys had been instructed to finish clearing the table of those diners who had lingered, thus delaying us. We interpreted that as an indication that we were about to be seated. We were wrong. We waited another ten or more minutes during which time they offered to open one of our bottles so we’d have something to drink. We declined their offer because it would have simply been uncomfortable in the tight space. (There is one place to sit, large enough to hold two people. It was piled high with our coats because there was no place else to put them and it was too warm to wear them.) Both small rooms are dark, as noted previously, but it’s far from romantic unless your notion of romantic includes close-set tables and a fairly high noise level. Not so much that hearing was a regular problem, but hardly the quieter kind of place I associate with “romantic.”
Pigmon and trixie-pea brought a lovely bottle of Champagne to get the evening rolling off to a good start and it worked wonderfully well. I will leave the details of the bottle to them (it was new to me); I will pause only to observe that it was a very enjoyable bottle and a nice way to get the evening started. Entirely lovely.
I won’t go through the meal item by item. Instead, I will say that we generally agreed that things were remarkably uneven at best: trixie-pea’s duck pate was excellent. (Actually, in retrospect, it was the single excellent dish of the evening.) I ordered French onion soup. It’s something I rarely do because it is so often done poorly. It’s one of those hallmark dishes: so “simple” and yet so challenging to get right. Sorta like Mozart: the notes on the page aren’t so hard to play, but getting those notes to sound just right takes genius. I will order French onion soup when I have high expectations and think that they might actually be met. I trust that success will serve as a mark of the chef’s ability. I was sadly disappointed: I got beef bouillon with onions that had been seriously oversalted. In retrospect, I wish I’d returned it for the kitchen to taste. Near as I can tell, LDC’s and Pigmon’s salads were, ummm, adequate. Not an auspicious start.
Oh, the bread. That’s another one of those hallmarks, at least in my book. Again, perfectly...adequate. Good bread isn’t hard to find, it really isn’t. Unless you’re eating at Cotes du Rhone. Maybe we should have extended the BYOB to mean “bread” as well.
Pigmon brought a beautiful bottle of Chateauneuf de Pape for us to accompany dinner, a Cotes du Rhone to enjoy at Cotes du Rhone. The wine seemed a bit tannic at first, at least to my taste, but grew better as the evening progressed. It turned into a genuinely wonderful bottle, smooth as silk and just the right weight for the dinner. A real mouthful of flavor and most enjoyable, notwithstanding a dinner that didn’t measure up at all.
Things weren’t helped along by our server who, though attentive and genuinely trying hard, simply wasn’t that knowledgeable. When she asked Pigmon how he wanted his braised lamb shanks cooked, we realized we were on our own. For my part, I have never been served cassoulet as it was served last night: ladled from a saucepot onto my plate. This didn’t harm the crust because...there was no crust! The cassoulet itself was...okay. It didn’t merit a whole Toulouse sausage (I got three slices) and the duck confit was, uh...not a generous portion (though trixie-pea generously shared some of her own duck confit entree). It was a thoroughly adequate dish, I’m dismayed to report. LDC’s bouillabaise was generous, but not with seafood so much as with salt. I tried a little and, frankly, I regret not sending it back. Yes, it was that salty. A shame, really, since deep down underneath all the salt seemed to be a reasonably toothsome broth.
I’ll let trixie-pea and Pigmon speak for themselves, pausing only to note that at the end of the meal, they did not seem particularly happy with the meal. Thank god they had such wonderful company.
The dessert selection was, uh...uncomplicated: three kinds of cheesecake and fudge cake. They have a cheese plate for an appetizer; would it be that difficult to arrange another one for dessert? Three kinds of cheesecake? I had brought a small bottle of Alvear Pedro Ximenez from a 1927 solera and I ended up with pecan caramel cheesecake because it was the best possible match for the sherry. It turned out to be a pleasant surprise and even matched nicely with the PX, an unctuous wine in the best sense: raisin-y, with notes of caramel and fig. Altogether a beautiful wine to finish.
Prices were, I’m pleased to say, quite reasonable. If only we were as happy with the food as we were with the prices. We’ll probably go back because it’s so close (I wouldn’t if I had to travel). It can’t really be as bad as it seemed. Can it?
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It was fine, and I hope they do well. It's a bit far for us to go for bistro, since we're very close to Matou and Bouchon, but we enjoyed ourselves. It was very dark, they need to work on the lighting. But for being the first night, they did well for us. The lobster bisque was very good.
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