Bouchon - Bastille Day 2011

Celebrating Bastille Day at Bouchon, I like it!



The courtyard outside Bouchon is beautiful. We arrived early to enjoy some drinks at the Bouchon Bar. The patio was full of people enjoying classic French dishes, oysters, steak tartar, escargot, etc...





We walked up to the restaurant located on the second floor and we were seated immediately. I had been to the Bouchon in Las Vegas, the design and layout of the BH location is similar, but quite a bit smaller.





We ordered several starters escargot, foie gras terrine with sauterne gelee, heirloom tomato salad, goat cheese with frisee salad and oysters. Each dish was simple, but had amazingly fresh ingredients. My only criticism would be that the sauterne gelee was too sweet for me.



Our table did an amazing job of ordering a variety of dishes and it wasn't even planned. I had the a Bastille Day special Truffle Risotto, which was piled high with shaved white truffles over a rich risotto. It was a bit too thick, but the rice was not overcooked. Other dishes were the Moules au Safran, Gnocchi à la Parisienne, Truite aux Amandes, Steak Frites and Salmon served with vegetables. I sampled the dishes and everything was good. But because it's Bouchon, the expectations are high and so are the prices. The experience with friends is priceless, but similar to my experience at Bouchon Las Vegas, I was expecting the food to have a "wow" factor and it was just good.

Bouchon - Las Vegas

I was expecting so much more from a Thomas Keller restaurant. The night started off poorly when we had to wait almost 30 mins for our table, party of three at 9PM.

As we waited for our table we scanned the menu and decided we would order dishes to share. Our server started off being very helpful, but slowly lost interest as the meal progressed.



For starters we ordered the Assiette de Charcuterie and the Salade de Frisée aux Lardons et Oeuf Poché. Before the starters arrived, bread was delivered, it was nice, but not impressive. The starters took a lot longer then they should've, considering there was minimal cooking involved. The salami was okay and should have been served with more bread. The salad was good and the egg was well poached, the vinaigrette was delicious. The toasted Brioche served with the salad was amazing. As our plates were cleared, our table was covered in crumbs. The crumbs were never cleaned from our table. I noticed several other tables being crumbed between each course.



For our entrees we decided to split the Croque Madame and the special of the evening, a Pan Seared Duck breast served with roasted Sunchokes, Satueed Chantrelles, Chestnut Pain Perdu and a Huckleberry Gastric.



The Croque Madame was delicious, the mornay sauce was rich and bread was so buttery. The fries served with the sandwich were under seasoned and very ordinary. We were so excited for the duck dish, but it couldn't have been more disappointing. The duck was over cooked, the entire dish was cold and bland.



Our server seemed very distracted and forgot to bring over items we asked for and never really checked on us. For the cost of the meal and the reputation of the chef behind the restaurant, I expected the food to be well executed and the service to be on point. None of these things were true.