REMY EATS: LA PETITE GROCERY

La Petite Grocery has always been for me like one of those classic films that I never got around to seeing. It seemed as though people were constantly talking about it, and every time it came into conversation, I felt slightly ignorant for not having checked it out yet. I even developed a routine of looking at it wistfully as I drove past it everyday – my neck would crane and my eyes would linger even as my head told me to focus on the road. Case in point: it’s a place I’ve been dying to visit. So it should come as no surprise that last week, I made dinner reservations and spent all of Friday gazing at the menu. We arrived that night and were promptly seated in the dimly-lit main dining room.

You might be surprised at this point to hear that agony immediately ensued. Ironically, the reason for my stress was exactly what had previously caused me such exuberance: the menu. As I pored over my options, I was thrown into a panicked frenzy of indecision that was only exacerbated when the chef came out to bring us a special amuse-bouche and say hello. I had already decided on what I was going to order, but a taste of an entrée special – drum with horseradish-crabmeat crust and beet purée – convinced me otherwise. I had to have it. (More on that in a bit.)

For my first course, I finally decided on steak tartare with red wine mustard and a quail egg, which came with a halo of accompanying toasts. The egg was a yummy but ancillary touch that didn’t contribute much to my overall impression of the dish. The steak was made perfectly, a lovely pomegranate-colored heap of heaven, the inherent sweetness of the high-quality beef tempered by a smattering of fresh, crisp parsley. The red wine mustard was the most brilliant element of all, as the vinegar of the mustard made a perfect union with the deep-dark-deliciousness of the wine. The result was a dynamic microcosm of universal harmony.

Lexie got the baked blue crab with Brie. On a spectrum, it was about as far as it could be from my pretty, light (relatively), slightly clever steak. Baked like a casserole and topped with chives and bread crumbs that cooked to a golden-brown in the oven, it certainly wasn’t beautiful. Taste-wise, though, it was superb. Crab and Brie are never a more classic combination than in this dish; the abundant morsels of tender crab melded with the molten cheese to form a creamy, luscious mass that was rich but not hedonistically so. Clever? No, but extremely soothing and delicious in a pure enough form that did not require ingenuity.

I effused a solitary squeal of excitement as my entrée was delivered. Like a WWII-era wife, I was overjoyed to be wholly reunited with the wonder that had so fleetingly delighted me, then vanished no sooner than I had fallen in love.

The drum was crisply pan-fried on the outside, flaky and white on the inside, and didn’t taste even slightly fishy. The beet purée was velveteen in consistency and utterly perfect in color, transforming what could have been a monochrome plate of golden seafood into a festive work of art, replete with an afterthought of tiny cubed beets. Those coral-colored crescents are as yet unidentified, though they were fruity and citrusy but dense rather than pulpy. I adored them. Give me more! While I had no regrets about ordering more of that captivating amuse, I found there to be too much fish and not enough of the tangy pink elusive fruit, so even though it was visually pleasing, the flavor didn’t ultimately do justice to the quality of the ingredients. I wished there could have been just a hint of saltiness or spiciness to cut the overall sweetness, which could have been provided by the horseradish, which was lacking. A good dish, but it grew too overbearing for me to finish the plate.

Lexie got the hangar steak, which was close in its heart-rending tenderness to the brisket at Boucherie but French as opposed to Southern in taste. Just look at the meat! I could make a painting of this steak, so perfect in its pinkness and so unmarred by charring or uneven cooking. The caramelized onions were there more for flavor than for dignified presence, imparting the meat with more juice and sweetness than the sauce alone could have done. Many have revered the fries as the best in town, with potato skin edges and a generous dusting (oxymoron?) of mouth-wateringly coarse salt and none of the garlicky-parmesan stuff at Boucherie. Though the two share similar consistencies, if you are a true French fry savant as I am, they’re like apples and oranges. No, really. The truffle aioli that comes on the side is a joyous revelation that I’d buy in bulk.

I walked out of the restaurant feeling very satisfied with the four individual plates I had tasted but also slightly confused. After this nice meal, I still didn’t feel quite familiar with the menu. There had been a wide range of interest – from classic French bistro food like the baked crab and the hangar steak to the novelty of the drum – but not really a central vision. I realized that I craved a common thread among all the plates even more than I had craved my amuse-bouche; I wanted each dish to pivot around this main theme but to vary individually in flavor and technique. The steak tartare was clear testimony to the chef’s talent in creating intricate flavor combinations and the baked blue crab was so simply yummy that it could feasibly be prescribed as a substitute for antidepressants, but while the execution of some of these dishes was the high point of the meal, there was a lack of coherence that left a bit to be desired, even after I’d been sated. I do look forward to returning to taste the things I didn’t get to order; I just hope to see a more holistic and fine-tuned vision for the restaurant in the future.