French for Beginners

A soupe de poisson, or fish soup, is served with croutons and rouille. The pungent saffron-flavored fish broth is well thickened and hearty. It reminds me of the egg yolk-thickened fish soup from the South of France called bourride. It is a custom to float slices of toast topped with rouille (red-pepper mayonnaise) in your bourride, and we enjoyed that traditional routine here. But on another visit, I sampled Le Mistral's bouillabaisse. It, too, was served with slices of toast and rouille. In fact, it tasted like the same soup with some pieces of fish, shrimp and scallops added. All fish soups do not have to taste the same.

Our two entrées, a rack of lamb and a grilled beef tenderloin, were brought to the table at the same time. The lamb was rosy, perfectly roasted and spectacularly presented with the bones of the chops intertwined. But the beef tenderloin with pesto butter and crispy wild mushrooms was a disappointment. The meat was squishy, and the domestic mushrooms were neither crispy nor wild. Both meat courses were served with a mélange of roasted potatoes, green beans and snow peas.

The potatoes tasted like they were roasted a long time ago and reheated recently. But it was the redundancy thing that really bothered me. There's nothing unusual about seeing the same soup bases, salad dressings and side orders used in several dishes in economy-minded American restaurants. But this one-size-fits-all approach to dining seems very un-French. Vegetables are so carefully paired with proper accompaniments in France, I think this practice of dumping the same potato-veggie mix on every plate would be against Napoleonic law. And I'm nearly certain that serving blueberries in two consecutive courses would warrant corporal punishment. But alas, Eldridge Parkway is a long way from France.

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Along with the bouillabaisse, I sampled grilled sea bass and cassolette de poulet on my second visit to Le Mistral. A cassolette is an individual-sized baking dish, and poulet means chicken -- so when you cut to the chase, you're talking good old-fashioned chicken potpie. The beautifully decorated high-rise pastry crust is much fancier than the one that comes on the Swanson's frozen version, but the seasonings in the cream sauce inside aren't much more exciting. It's intriguing that the potpie is served with a side of rice pilaf, which you're supposed to stir into the sauce, but the rice doesn't help the blandness. The chicken potpie at the Daily Review Cafe is miles ahead of this one.

The grilled sea bass is moist and cooked just right. But the sauce causes a long debate on the subject of whether olives and tarragon are a good combination. The friend who ordered the dish thinks not, and he points out that the menu says that the fish is served with fresh-braised fennel and a white wine olive sauce. He calls the waiter over to identify the green leaves on his plate. The waiter says it is indeed tarragon. I think this is a silly debate, since tarragon and fennel both taste like licorice, but then again I can't say I'm wild about licorice and olives with fish either. But we can't really judge the aroma of the dish because the chef has stuck a gratuitous sprig of rosemary upright in the middle of the food. So now the dish smells like licorice, olives, Christmas trees and fish.

I started the meal with the salt-free escargots, and a friend got a bowl of vegetable soup. The soup was a hearty sort of lentil and onion potage that tasted lovely on a cold winter night. An inexpensive Christian Moreau Chablis was our choice of wine. Tasting a French Chablis is a good way to remind yourself of how wide a range of flavors the chardonnay grape really has. Chablis is north of Burgundy, so the grapes grown there don't have a chance to ripen fully. The wine is so acidic, it makes you pucker. And while the stark, lemony flavors aren't that great when you drink the wine alone, they are wonderful with food, especially with fish in rich sauces. The Chablis was one of two interesting white wines on the list. The rest were remarkably boring.

The Chablis and my bouillabaisse make a splendid dinner, even though I've already been there and done that with the rouille croutons. There is lots of fish in the soup, and the scallops are especially plump and flavorful when I fish them out of the saffrony fish broth. A crisp green salad with something besides blueberry dressing might have been nice, but you can't have everything.

If I lived off the Eldridge Parkway exit, I'd probably go hang out at Le Mistral all the time. Compared to many of the other restaurants in that neighborhood, the place is pretty damn exciting. But for those of us who don't live that far out, Le Mistral holds little appeal. There are some terrific dishes and some decent wines to be had here. But it's an awfully long drive for what amounts to a French restaurant on training wheels.