Dinner at Le Bistrot (07-Jun-07)

To celebrate MS’s birthday MS, PL, CC, KP, VW and I had dinner at Le Bistrot at the Indoor Stadium. It’s a small restaurant with a cosy ambience and maroon décor that sits around 30 people. It opened in Joo Chiat two years ago and moved to the Indoor Stadium earlier this year.

The restaurant operates on a “table d'hôte” basis, meaning you pay a fixed price for either a two- or a three-course meal. An entree, main and dessert is $48, and for two courses it’s $38.

I tried the Poor Man’s Caviar for the entrée. PL warned me that it was big enough for two and she wasn’t wrong! In fact most of the dishes were well-sized portions, contrary to what one expects from French cuisine. The Poor Man’s Caviar is served in an airtight pot with toasted bread. It’s made from eggplant and garlic purée, chicken liver mousse and Pernod créme fraîche. The liver was not strongly flavoured and the eggplant and garlic purée were very refreshing. The others in our group had chilled pumpkin soup with goose rillettes (rillettes is a preparation of meat similar to paté), gratinated onion soup, and Tripes à la Niçoise –a gratinated casserole of beef tripe, white wine, tomatoes and onions.

For the main course VW and KP had the chargrilled rack of Yorkshire pork with a mushroom velouté (a type of light sauce made from stock, butter and flour) and pear compote. CC and I had lamb chops from Australia, served medium-rare. All the meats were generous, large cuts, in my opinion slightly too salty on the outsides, but soft and juicy overall. The lamb was a little more fatty than I’m used to but I always think that lamb is seasonal meat and as it’s winter now in Australia lamb would be naturally fatter. I always prefer lamb in the summer, as it is younger and leaner.

The restaurant has a respectable wine menu (mostly French as you’d expect) and the sommelier was helpful and knowledgeable. Selecting French wines can be tricky as they don’t have the year-in year-out consistency of New World wines. We ordered a 2004 Côtes du Rhône from Domaine Fond Croze, a gold medal winner in Paris in 2005. It was well rounded and nicely structured, a good compliment to the meats.

I ordered the bread pudding with rhubarb for dessert and the ladies all order the Impérial (which is an additional $10). The Impérial is macerated wild strawberry soup with pink peppercorns, mango and passionfruit sorbet and champagne. In fact lots of champagne, most certainly more than a normal glass full. The combination of peppercorns with the sweetness of strawberries was very interesting. I’ve had strawberries with balsamic vinegar and the combination of sweet/bitter was good, I’m not so certain the sweet/peppery combination using peppercorn is quite so pleasant.

Would I come back – Certainly. Reasonably priced for French food. A limited selection of dishes but plenty of interesting choices, well presented and balanced. Relaxing ambience. Looking forward to going back again.
Service – Friendly, unobtrusive. All meals served at the same time.
Food – Very good.