The inside reminds me of a modern art museum with its all white walls and minimalist decor. This is also one of those places where the entire menu fits on to one-sheet of paper, but half of it is just description of the dishes. The dishes are all very complex sounding (ingredients include foie gras, sweetbreads, and pork confit) yet clean at the same time (ingredients include watermelon, fresh snow peas, and peaches). For an appetizer I chose the mussel soup ($13) which came with white fish, saffron, garlic and basil and for an entree I chose the duck breast with radish, watermelon, and green garbanzo beans ($36). The meal started with an amuse bouche of pork belly which was the perfect bite and smokey and flavorful. What was great about this place was that they had asked if any of us had any dietary needs and my friend Deanna is a vegetarian and they actually listened and got her a separate vegetarian amuse bouche. Nice. The soup came out and instead of the soup being in the bowl already, they served me an empty bowl and they poured the steaming hot soup directly from a copper pot into the bowl. You could immediately smell the saffron and garlic and it was amazing. There were several giant pieces of mussels and they were super plumb and so freakin tasty. The whitefish and potato slices also really soaked up the flavor of the dish. There was actually some kind of spicy component but not so spicy that you couldn't taste anything else. It was really a fabulous soup.
Next came the duck breast and I had actually seen it on the table next to us before I got it and it looked delicious. I saw that there was about 1 1/2 inches of crispy skin on it and I was super excited to try it myself. The plating of the dish extremely modern and minimalist. It was served on a giant white plate with 2 medium sized pieces of duck and then just a sprinkling of the beans and radishes. As soon as I cut into the duck I knew it would be spot on. It was medium rare and just the right amount of juicy. The skin and fat was the perfect combination: not too oily but not dried out at all. Many restaurants rarely get duck right because it's really easy to dry out and/or tough, but this was one of the best pieces of duck I've ever had in my life. I didn't even need any of the other ingredients on the plate as I didn't think they added much value to the dish anyways. I almost wished this was served with a simple bowl of white rice instead of all the other stuff.
This place was close to a 4.5 fork review but a few things knocked it down. One was service. While they started off super attentive and it's clear that the waitstaff knows a lot about food and wine, our waitress disappeared for almost 20 minutes and kept us waiting to order which I find really annoying. Then the desserts weren't really great. We got the frozen cucumber mousse ($11) and they gave us the caramelized brioche on the house since we wanted to try dessert at Avec but even at midnight they were completely booked. The desserts were just too molecular gastronomy for me. I don't like my desserts to be fancy, I just like a simple moist cake or some fruit. The mousse actualy really did taste like cucumber which was amazing but that's really not very desserty. The brioche was tiny and just wasn't fulfilling either.
We had a bottle of wine, beer and some cocktails which really up'd the bill. Total bill was ~$100/pp, which is actually a lot cheaper than what you would pay in New York for a similar meal, but it's still pretty steep for a night out.
Photo credit: Yelp
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