Pierrot
Serious French food on Beacon
Hill
BY ROBERT NADEAU
January
7 - 13, 2005
Jacky Robert, the French-born nephew of the French-born Lucien
Robert (founder of the lamented Maison Robert), is back in the
French-restaurant business. And he’s back with a menu so conservative
it recalls not only Paris-bistro favorites of the last 200 years,
but also the popular dishes of pre-nouvelle-cuisine French restaurants
in America such as, well, Maison Robert (but on a more modest
scale), the Du Barry, Chez Jean, Chez Jacques, and Le Bourguignon
(to follow the Boston-Cambridge line-up of 25 years ago). We’re
talking early Julia Child here: pâté, escargots, frog legs, onion
soup, boeuf bourguignon, moules à la marinière, coq au vin, chocolate
mousse, duck à l’orange, chicken cordon bleu — the whole neuf.
One can, of course, delve deeper, into the pig’s-feet salad, tripe
à la mode de Caen, confit duck, and a few such things that the
old French chefs knew about but didn’t yet serve to Americans.
But the core menu is so old it’s new again. This kind of retro
requires commitment, and some of the dishes show that. Others
suggest that the restaurant is simply too small and too popular
— people like this familiar food, and at prices that aren’t the
top in town. But some things are rushed, and the kitchen is being
pushed every night.
Food begins with slices of fresh baguette and salted butter,
as though we were back in 1970, and olive oil never happened.
Okay, so what about that pig’s-feet salad ($6.95)? Well, the
pig’s feet are boned and worked into three breaded patties of
fat and gristle, about as delicious a way to eat pig’s feet as
there could be, and that’s before you spread on some of the parsley-onion
dip. Also, the greens are dressed really well. This is one of
the main ways French cuisine got its reputation: by taking the
ingredients of the poor and making something special.
Pâté was once another such miracle, but our special platter of
three ($8.95) was the usual smooth livery stuff, the usual rough-textured
country pâté, and the usual scene-stealing three-layer salmon.
What was unusual? They forgot the cornichons, those little pickles
that go so well with pâté. This is what happens in restaurants
that are too successful.
The onion soup ($6.50) avoids the classic pitfalls — too much
salt, alcohol, or cheese — and the stock is good with some onion
flavor, but the bread is soft. The soup of the day ($5.25) was
chicken with carrot, a clear, simple soup and good as gold. A
special smoked-duck-breast-and-gizzard salad ($12.50) was an excellent
light supper, the gizzards cooked to respectable tenderness, but
the breast not all that smoked.
My favorite of the entrées was the chicken cordon bleu ($16.50),
actually slices from a rolled breast, with a fine pink sauce,
French beans, and a cheesy cake of potato slices that is all you
ever need to know about potatoes.
Beef with Burgundy ($16.75) is supposed to taste like beef and
wine. Ours was full of chunks of beef, in that in-between state
of dried-out before it becomes overcooked stew beef. It was too
salty, and you didn’t really get the wine taste. There were supposed
to be chunks of carrot, onion, potatoes, and bacon. I found potatoes,
cut into olive shapes as in French classic cuisine, but just potatoes.
Another dish rushed out of the kitchen.
A special entrée of lobster ($23.95) was a nice dish, chunks
of meat with a wisp of a butter sauce, on a bed of spinach, with
a stunning potato-cheese cake. Calvin Trillin used to joke that
some restaurants served so many dishes on so many beds that they
were "tuck me in" restaurants. The fish our day ($18.95) was black
sea bass, the real thing (not Chilean sea bass), in a funky Provençal
sauce, with the crucial potato cake and some braised fennel. |
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The wine list is mostly French, and not expensive at the bottom.
We had a bottle of real Chablis, 2001 La Chablisienne ($32), toasty,
tart, and distinctly lemony, with perhaps a hint of vanilla oak.
For dessert, all we were offered was a chance to order Grand
Marnier soufflé ($10) and the pastry cart. This omitted coffee,
the other three desserts, and the cheese plate. The soufflé is
fabulous, light and meltingly perfect, with a flavor of egg, orange,
and ambrosia — or is that the ambrosia in the cup of sauce next
to the soufflé? No, it’s a thin custard sauce, crème anglaise.
From the pastry cart ($6.95/each), we had a lemon-curd tart, pear
on marzipan, and mixed fruit with little taste — all on a thickish
crust I don’t really regard as French pastry. Tea ($2.75), once
requested, is served properly in hot pots of water. If you select
your bag quickly and put it in the pot, not the cup, you will
get brewed tea. Decaf ($2) is good and served with a variety of
sugars and substitutes.
Service was frequent and positive, despite some omissions and
a lag at dessert. My guests had a prior relationship with one
of the owners, so our table probably got a little more attention
than some. Still, the problem is obvious, if sort of benign. Either
the prosperity will last, and the owners will hire a little more
help, or it won’t, and the existing help won’t be spread so thin
every night. Jacky Robert, who is listed as "consulting chef,"
will likely move on and up, but it wouldn’t be a bad thing if
he stayed, shortened the menu, and put in some innovations to
keep people coming back. This French-food fad has been ongoing
in Boston for more than 200 years, but there are ebbs and flows.
The room is small and crowded, like a North End trattoria, but
it shows a little bare brick and some salmon-colored wall between
windows, plus framed French posters featuring the eponymous white-faced
clown. It cannot be denied that Pierrot has always been a mime,
but he also frequently speaks, often in parody and prologue. No
one appears here in the character of the lovesick Pierrot; the
only performance is some French torch singing in deep background.
Robert Nadeau can be reached at [email protected].
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