I believe the menu is French inspired but it didn't scream French food. There were several fish main entrees and a few cuts of steak and then the tasting menu. We started with the cheese plate and then I got the Wagyu beef cheek ($37) and we also all split mac and cheese ($8) - which I thought was a bit weird to have on the menu. They start out with giving you these small cheese puff pastries, which were quite warm and delicious and then an amuse bouche of ginger carrot soup. The soup was more of a gazpacho since it was cold and it was topped with a bit of chili oil to give it some heat. You could definitely taste the carrot and ginger but I'm generally not a huge fan of cold soups. It kind of seems like an oxymoron to me. Next they offer you your choice of bread, but I didn't see any butter. Not sure if that was intentional or not, but probably better for my health anyways. Our cheese plate came out and I thought that in a place like this they would stand there and tell you about the cheeses and jams. Instead, they just put the plate down and walked away. One was definitely a blue cheese and one was a light brie, but I wasn't sure about the other 2 (both hard mild cheeses). Cheese is always tastes great to me, so no complaints there. I wasn't a huge fan of the jams actually. One was very bitter tasting and the others just didn't add anything to the cheeses for me. They also served the cheese with this really fabulous toasted bread, but it just didn't seem to be the right vehicle for the cheese. It seemed more appropriate for butter and jam since it was a very thick piece of bread.
There was a significant lag between our cheese dish and main entrees but luckily I was pretty full from the cheese. One of the reason I got the beef cheek was because it came with polenta. But when the dish came out, the beef cheek was on the dish with a garnish of lots of sauteed onions and the polenta was in a side dish. I guess maybe it's an Asian thing but I like to have my main entree on a "bed" of something or at least on the same plate so that I can combine them into one bite. But that's not really a huge deal breaker or anything. I will say that the beef cheek was extremely tender and soft. I've never had beef cheek before so I'm not sure what I was expecting but it almost looked like a small pieces of steak but with a more pulled meat texture. The meat was fabulous but I didn't really care for the onions on the dish. My co-workers got the lobster (which looked AMAZING. I wish I had gotten that) and the cod (also looked very tasty but small). The mac and cheese came in these small pots and while they were definitely good (how can you really go wrong with cheese and pasta?) it didn't taste any different than mac and cheese I've gotten in less fancier places. At a place like this, I would have expected a touch of truffle oil or something like that. For dessert, we got the roasted pineapple and chocolate cake. They also serve you complimentary macaroons (which they are apparently famous for) and chocolates. They also had a great sounding souffle on the menu but it takes 20 minutes to make, so I wish the waiter had told us about it earlier so we could have pre-ordered it. The pineapple dish sounded good because it said it came with rice pudding (which I love) but when it came out, the pudding was more like a thin decorative layer rather than an actual bite. Both desserts were certainly sweet and beautiful looking and put me over in the edge in terms of fullness.
The overall experience was just very adult. Everyone there was clearly either super wealthy or there on business. I got this feeling that I probably shouldn't have shown up in jeans and a t-shirt. :) But they didn't make me feel bad about that, it was more of my own feeling. The service was definitely 5 forks and very attentive, but the food wasn't 5 forks. It was good but not amazing and I'm just glad that I was able to expense it. Total bill was $330 (with tip for 3 people).
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