Adoring Bouchon
Bouchon is now open at 1209 E. Cary St., (804) 225-9116.
I cannot keep a secret. If I’m in love, I sing love songs in the shower, in the car and on the street. My food tastes better and my wine richer. I overeat and cannot sleep. And, if I find a French restaurant that I’m in love with – that’s adore. Especially one where I feel equally comfortable dressed in black tie or blue jeans and a ball cap.
That’s what the bartender wears at my latest crush, Bouchon.
Yes, I’m involved in a steamy, sauce-laden, love affair with Bouchon, the six-week old bistro in Shockoe Slip, located in the former Pomegranate space. I’ve eaten six meals in as many weeks, lunch and dinner, and never been disappointed by the food. The service, well, let’s just say it is best at the bar. Not that it’s bad anywhere, but the waiters are still on training wheels in the dining room, and are acutely suffering from a case of peppermill-itis.
Oh, you haven’t heard of peppermill-itis?
It’s a highly contagious condition found in mid-priced dining rooms across the country wherein the waiter brings a peppermill seconds after serving the food, before you’ve had a chance to taste it, and asks if you’d like some "freshly ground pepper."
How would you know? You haven’t cut the first sliver. And, if the dish really does need freshly ground pepper – why doesn’t the chef add it in the kitchen? I guess the disease starts in the dining room, the front-of-the-house, so to speak, but somehow, gratefully, never moves to the kitchen, or back-of-the-house. I never see chefs asking each other if every dish they make needs more pepper.
Waiters suffering from peppermill-itis usually sacrifice other points of service, such as offering a glass of wine (Come on, I’m practically begging you to up-sell me. That peppermill isn’t going to make you the money – or me as happy – as glass of something red.) while obsessing over bringing the peppermill. Afflicted servers feel obliged to offer "freshly ground pepper" with every dish, except dessert. Such is the case at Bouchon.
A staff meeting or pre-shift line-up might eradicate the outbreak of peppermill-itis, mispronounced dinner specials and the general lack of wine knowledge found amongst the dining room servers, and I’m sure this will happen once the place has had time to get off its trainers. Until then, I suggest you ask for the affable, well-trained, career-server Olivier, to serve you from behind the bar.
He knows the wine list, which focuses on gems from the Rhone and Provence. He is so good at his job he makes you wish it were yours. I probably don’t even need to mention the fabulous bar specials, such as the bison burger w/ frites, $12, speck quiche, $4 or half-priced P.E. I. mussels to get you to sit at his bar, now do I? But I will: good, better, best sums them right up.
Service aside, let’s talk about the exceptional bistro fare, influenced by the food and wine of SW France, birthplace of the chef/owner of Bouchon. The calves liver, $21, tender as a Cole Porter love song, crispy and crackly around its edges as if played on a hi-fi, knee-weakening, sherry-vinegar-demi-tangy, earthy, for god’s sake, primal calves liver. I brought the leftover home to my non-liver-eating spouse, didn’t say about what it was, and watched it disappear faster than Chriss Angel on a Vegas rooftop. Arrive between 5 and 6 p.m. and have it as part of a three-course prix fixe for $20.**
Are you a greens fan? Well, then, let me say that Bouchon should teach a class on salad, and how to dress it. Their strategy can summed up by avoiding the letter "k"—no Kraft and no Krab—nothing that isn’t found in nature cozies up to the springy, almost nude greens, tossed with house-made dressings.
A favorite is the escarole, celery, radish, cucumber and garlic anchovy dressing salad, $8, but you must try the avocado, celery root, caper, cornichon salad with mustard aioli, $9, too. Hell, try them all.
Free on Wednesdays? Then you won’t want to miss the top sirloin with bordelaise sauce, pommes frites and salad, $20.**
The kissed-by-the-grill meat, ruby inside and served with browned French fries as skinny as a ballerina’s pinkie finger, are most likely house-made and definitely salted to otherworldly perfection; they will make you praise the simple spud to strangers at the next table. And, served in silver cup next to a bowl of soupy mussels, the pommes frites make you want to banish another "k" word, ketchup, to the ends of the earth.
Other suggested dishes served at Bouchon: veal sweetbreads w/ shallot, ginger, thyme demi, served in a cast iron casserole, $12; rabbit stew; rainbow trout with almond caper butter, $20; roasted leg of lamb with white bean stew and thyme cream, $24. And for dessert, I highly recommend the lavender-salted ice cream or the flourless chocolate torte, to name a couple of stand-outs.
The owners of Bouchon ran Lavandou in DC’s Cleveland Park for decades, and are, hopefully, an indicator species for the Richmond restaurant scene. They have put together a casually chic restaurant, that is affordable, warm, authentically regional and certainly not New American (meaning they don’t list every Tom, Dick and Harry from whom they buy their ingredients – they just buy good ingredients). They have something "special" to offer guests every night of the week.
They are that rare, white-billed woodpecker of Shockoe Slip; a good, neighborhood restaurant you won’t mind driving to get to.
Just make sure you get there early enough to visit Kelly Justice across the street at Fountain Bookstore before dinner.
**Please call in advance for details on prix fixe and other dinner specials. As with any restaurant, these things are subject to change. And, reservations are suggested. It is a small restaurant.
Bouchon ***1/4
1209 E. Cary St.
(804) 225-9116
* Bouchon offers free parking in the deck across from the Omni on 12th Street.
What’s in the Stars:
0—don’t go
*-average
** above average
*** very good
**** excellent dining experience
Imagine learning to process caviar in Russia after a childhood of Cup-a-Soup. Needless to say, Varmit Pickeral was inspired. Thus began 20 years of restaurant gypsy-hood, beginning with Varmit’s first job as a dishwasher in an institutional kitchen and then trying out most any job Varmit could get in the hospitality industry, including; NC BBQ pit line-cook, cheese steward at Artisanal in Manhattan, grape picker, and specialty buyer for Balducci’s Food Lover’s Market in Northern Virginia.
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