Clayton, MO, like many municipalities, puts on a restaurant week in the dead of winter. I have no idea how I found out about it (possibly Sauce Magazine), but I can't resist a restaurant week, complete with a limited, and usually subpar, prix fixe menu.
The organizers had a nice website where they listed all of the restaurants along with the menus. I chose the restaurant with the most expensive regular menu, Chez Leon, since the price was already set (25/per). Chez Leon originally was in the Central West End, right across the street from my apartment on Laclede. As a grad student, going there was only a pipe dream. Time to make it reality.
We had reservations and were promptly seated when we arrived by the owner, who was doubling as the maitre d'. We were given the smallest table hugging the wall. The waiter could barely walk between the tables. My head was against a painting by "D. Byrne" (David??) and I was concerned with giving myself a concussion and/or ruining a Jackson Pollock-esque creation that was probably very expensive. Since the menu was prix fixe, we were able to order a starter, an entre and a dessert. No explanations of the mostly French-language menu were offerred so we just made some uneducated guesses: Le gâteau à la Jeanne d'Arc/ crème anglaise must be Joan of Arc's cat creamed English-style. I had to order that.
Our soup of lobster bisque was quite good, with a bit of spice at the end. We both ordered the beef tenderloin, reminiscent of many-a-wedding dinners. Meh. For dessert, my martyred cat actually came out as an espresso cake, which was good but not crazy. Tim had tarte tatin, and apple pie ala mode with a fancy name, and slightly better than my gateau.
The biggest problem we had was with the wine. We each started off with a cocktail, but I wanted to have some wine with my dinner so I asked for a wine menu, which strangly was never offered to us at a French restaurant. It was very modest, with only one page each of white and red. I ordered the Beaujoulais and waited. And waited. Our entrees came out with lightning speed (wedding dinner style) and still no wine. The waiter came back with a Pinot, which is not even close to Beaujoulais, but whatever-I'm almost done with my entree at this point. The wine was bad, and I even considered sending it back but was too scared. We came home and had a 3 Buck Chuck Beaujoulais Neauvou. Much better.
Guess what, we're never coming back
www.chezleon.com
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment