Expecting Something Offal
Melissa and I were excited to try Bizou for our second Dine About Town dinner. All the reviews mention their "rustic" cuisine. Which is to say that they feature a lot of organ meats and various odd cuts of meat (beef cheeks, for instance).
Unfortunately, none of these were available on their prix fixe. I don't expect them to put the seared foie gras on the prix fixe, but it seems to me that if this kind of cuisine is your specialty, you'd want to offer some samples so that people who come in for Dine About Town might be tempted to come back. But our budget required us to stay on the fixed menu.
The first course was a choice between soup and salad. We both went for the soup, which was a reduced chicken broth with mushrooms and farro. It's usually difficult to get fired up about soup, but this was a really flavorful dish. Really nicely seasoned, good texture for the solid pieces, just a simple, great dish.
We also both went for the trout, which was roasted and served with escarole and mushrooms. The other option was lamb shoulder stew. Perhaps we should have gone with that, but we had a bottle of white wine with dinner, and it didn't seem like it would be a good match. The trout was good but nothing noteworthy.
The white wine I mention above was a Pouilly-Fumé, a Sauvignon Blanc from the Loire valley. The prices on the wine list looked good, and they were running a special for a while that if you bought a bottle from their new neighbors, K & L Wines, they'd waive the corkage. A nice nod to the neighborhood.
So then we got to dessert. I had a hibiscus granita which was really nice. Melissa's dessert, a concoction of chocolate, meringue, almonds and various other items, was delicious but gigantic. It reminded us of the kind of super messy sundae you'd get at an ice cream parlor. It was very weird; it's not like the rest of the meal, or even my dessert, was made up of humongous portions.
I'd be willing to give Bizou another shot, this time not going with the prix fixe. The soup was so phenomenal, and the desserts were good. The "neighborhood restaurant" feel seemed sincere, especially with the K & L special. But next time, I'm going for the organ meat.
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