Brasserie La Provence

Recently, I had the hankering to try a restaurant that serves cuisine that I am not too familiar with, Brasserie La Provence which serves French cuisine, was the pick. My dinner companions were very accommodating and agreed to accompany me on this culinary outing that was out of my typical comfort zone. It’s a weird thing, but it seems that all French food restaurants have the same smell. I understand that this is due to serving similar food, but I cannot distinguish the smell. FYI I can’t smell too well. I would describe it as a pungent, greasy smell. If you readers out there know what the smell comes from please let me know.

When you walk into Brasserie, it does not have a large foyer area, you’re basically standing at the bar with a few tables to the right. We had to stand in a small space between the hostess stand and the bar to let an elderly couple pass. After waiting a few minutes, we then promptly seated in the fairly small dining area in the back of the building. We were seated on the higher terrace in the dining room on wicker bottomed wood framed chairs, not great furniture, but its okay. The ambiance is a casual café. In the dining area there is a small wine closet that is basically a glass enclosed wine cabinet. It was interesting, but Park mentioned to me that people were taking their opened bottles of wine home in a plastic bags. I’ve never seen this before, but I guess they get around this with the bag that you cannot re-open.

Our sever acknowledged us a few minutes after we were seated, but she was pretty busy, so I can understand why certain things were slow; for example, our check, bread, water, and taking our orders. Despite these things she was a good server: she was polite, answered our questions fairly well, and got our orders correct.

The menus do have the French names, but below each item have descriptions in English. We began the meal with a round of French beers: Joe had a Kronenbourg and I had a Fisher Amber. They have some fairly exotic beers on tap like Spaten Opimator and Kronenbourg. The Fisher Amber was flavorful, but not a notable amber ale. To attempt to get a good sampling of what Brasserie had to offer we got two appetizers: the Croquette de Crabe (Crab Cake) and Bouchot mussels. The crab cake was lightly fried and had a lot of flavorful crab that is served on a bed of variety greens. The Bouchot mussels are mussels steamed with white wine, garlic and thyme. Both of these were great. They each ran about $9. Park also had the Salade Maison or side salad served with red wine vinaigrette. He mentioned that it was a good salad; from the appearance it seemed to be a good salad. I had the rack of lamb special, Joe had the Saumon Manon, salmon dish, and Park had the scallop special. My rack of lamb meal was a fairly small portion for $28, but the presentation and flavor were great. This was served with asparagus and chutney of some sort. The scallops were pan fried perfectly, they were tender and moist. This scallop special was served with a lobster and goat cheese fried cake that was smooth in texture, mild lobster flavor, and good sized chunks of lobster. The salmon dish was served with toast drizzled with balsamic vinegar. I did not try the salmon, but according to Joe it was great. The final tab came to $123. In retrospect, the meal was a good price, not great, but good. I would give the Brasserie La Provence a rating of three and a half stars out of five.

http://www.laprovencenobhill.com/