Eau is a real dining room. You know–the old-fashioned concept that came before “the dining experience,” Broadway set designers providing interior decor, and servers in costumes. It’s spacious, with high ceilings and large C-shaped booths that are slightly elevated to give a better view of the room. And these days, it’s fairly quiet, as restaurants go, a component of comfort about which we get a ton of comments.
However, once people figure out what’s happened there, that may change. Brian Hale, the chef who had been at the stove of Monarch, has moved to Eau, and the Chase, as executive chef, in charge of all its kitchens. His touch on the menu is already apparent. Happily, he’s kept the excellent Marie-Anne Perez as chef de cuisine, second in command. That adds up to an evening of interesting food, nearly all of it wonderful.
In this day of foreshortened bread baskets due to rising food costs (and that definitely includes flour), it was great to see biscuits, rolls and a particularly delightful item that we can only describe as a pretzel mini-baguette. Slightly smaller than a hot dog bun, it, like the rest, arrived warm. Yes, real pretzel dough, its dark-brown toothsome exterior sprinkled with a little coarse salt, the chewy interior just right. In less refined surroundings, it might make certain folks think of some nacho cheese for a dip.
We’re not sure how much longer the corn ravioli will be on the menu, considering seasonality, but if it’s there, run, don’t walk. Housemade pasta, still al dente, is filled with corn, shallots, a little spinach and some boursin cheese, sauced in a white-wine tomato sauce and topped with locally grown mushrooms, looking much like enoki mushrooms, but described as velvet pioppinis on the menu. It’s an exemplary dish, and would make a swell vegetarian entree, too, just in case the sweet potato gnocchi or celeriac polenta main courses don’t tempt.
The poached lobster appetizer stars half a small tail and a claw, centered on a long plate and nestled between a cylinder of diced beet topped with diced mango, all in a vinagrette, and a vanilla-laced champagne aspic of crabmeat, another cylinder about the diameter of a half-dollar. Good lobster, to be sure, but the biggest surprise was how well beet and mango go together on the palate. As to the aspic, the seeming sweetness from the vanilla is a surprise, but it rose from just okay to just fine with a smidge of the sriracha, or hot sauce, that lay in a comma-shaped swirl on the plate, its heat bouncing off the other components in a fine fandango.
Not ordering the short ribs ( a Hale specialty at his previous kitchen), and even passing up skate wing with lobster-mushroom risotto, wasn’t easy. But the menu lured us in other directions. The name pork belly seems to make some people shudder. But every time they’ve nibbled a strip of bacon, they’ve been eating pork belly. And just as some bacon is quite lean, so is some pork belly, and that’s just what we got. Yes, the meat is soft and unctuous, braised gently and then given a final browning to crisp up the outside. Rich? Oh, yeah. But the richness was cut by roasted shredded brussels sprouts, their slight bitterness a counterpoint, and so were the roasted tomatoes that also topped off the pork. It sat on a cake of coarse-ground grits seasoned with white cheddar cheese, the whole thing sauced with a little gravy made from the pan juices. Blissful. Hale’s firm belief that vegetables are as interesting as meat and fish shows well here.
Slices of venison, ruddy-rare, were sauced with a veal reduction flavored with port and black currant juice, a rich, slightly tart counterpoint to the lean, flavorful meat. Alongside was a generous slab of what could easily be the platonic ideal of a potato gratin. The potatoes were neither mushy nor undercooked, a hint of either onion or garlic, rich cheese, a touch of truffle, just wondrous.
Sometimes meals leave you feeling like you don’t even want to think about dessert. But we had paced ourselves, realizing that the dessert options were going to be worth exploring–and we were right. Two delicious choices, one very sophisticated and another perhaps more homey than the dessert chef might have realized, popped up. A chocolate creme brulee had been unmolded and served with a vanilla custard sauce. One bite of the creamy custard, and Ann had a flashback to childhood. Chocolate pudding, not the instant, water-flavored stuff that seems to be what’s around these days, was the pleasure of a lot of kids. If we ate the same My-T-Fine now, even made with that sinful whole milk, it might not taste the same to us. But, my goodness, this creme brulee, whose caramelized sugar crust was on the bottom, certainly seemed to taste like that, smooth, chocolate-y and rich.
“Chibouste” isn’t a word often seen on local dessert menus. It refers to a custard that’s lightened with whipped cream or beaten egg whites and perhaps some gelatin. Here we had a lemon chibouste, light in texture, full in flavor, sauced with a passion fruit puree punctuated by a warm cookie. Great combination of temperatures, textures and flavors, a sophisticated, happy counterpoint to the rich chocolate of the brulee.
The elegant wine list is large and with a great deal of range, from bottles at $25-$35 to selections that go well into three figures. Also praiseworthy is a by-the-glass list that has such delicacies as a real French Burgundy, from Macon, in a generous pour, at $10. The grape is the same, but the difference between a French Burgundy, lean and stylish, and an over-oaked, buttery California Chardonnay is wider than the Atlantic Ocean. A California Cabernet Sauvignon and a Spanish Cava sparkling wine also were tasty, though the bubble in the Cava was beginning to fade.
Service runs smoothly, large groups are accommodated without blinking an eye, and folks drift in from Café Eau across the hall to check game scores on the television at the bar, where someone had set the focus and the volume so that it did not impinge on those who were eating and having conversations. Just another night in a real dining room.
Eau Bistro
The Chase Park Plaza
212 N. Kingshighway
314-454-9000
http://www.chaseparkplaza.com/dining/eaubistro.phtml
Credit cards: All major
Wheelchair access: Good
Smoking: Yes
Entrees: $18-$36
