Fluffy puffy dancing baby butt is one of the best reasons I can think of for using MCNs!

OK, so my birthday’s coming up (next week, send good presents). 5 years ago Sam & I celebrated my awesomeness in being born by going to dinner at The French Cafe, which is really expensive and has won a gazillion awards.

So anyway, we got The French Cafe cookbook this weekend at the liberry, and Dad is currently hard at work on one of the recipes (he’s pureeing cauliflower as I type). Which got me a-thinkin’ and a-lookin’, and made me hunt this down and repurpose it in a lazy person kind of way. ENJOY!

 

The French Cafe

We went here for my birthday, and because I can, here’s my mini writeup.

 

The menu

Asparagus Cappuccino with Porcini Powder

Foie Gras Parfait with Apple Caramel and Pear Relish

Orange, Fennel and Asparagus Salad with Marinated Salmon, Citrus Dressing and Caviar

Seared Scallops with Cauliflower Puree, Cep Mushrooms and Truffle Oil

Roasted French Goats Cheese with Parma Ham, Beetroot Confit and Red Wine Syrup

Crispy Roast Duckling with Mandarin Confit, Kumara Mash, Steamed Bok Choy and Jus of Oranges
or
Roasted Crayfish Tail with Sweet Carrot Puree, Almond Foam, Baby Cress and Mandarin Oil

Yoghurt Sorbet and Strawberry Cone

Vanilla Panna Cotta with Mango Puree and Passionfruit Jelly

Warm Bitter Chocolate Souffle with Hot Chocolate Sauce, Mandarin Confit and Caramel Icecream

 

The writing

Sorry about the lack of pictures – I did take my camera, but the lighting was so ‘romantic’ it wasn’t really conducive to flash-free photography. And one does not use one’s flash in such a fine dining establishment.

We were seated in the dining room, which when we arrived was quite empty and nicely quiet. It’s the sort of place where the waiting staff hovers discretely in case you need to catch their eye, or your glass needs filling. They don’t ask, they just fill – unless you decline. Which wasn’t really an issue for us, as we are cheap plebeians and only had 2 glasses of juice and a bottle of sparkling water between us all night. And folks, we were there for three hours. Restaurants hate people like us – it’s no secret they make most of their money off the wine.

As the night progressed, the dining room got busier and louder, full of middle-aged parties that looked like they were really enjoying their wine. Ruined the ambience a little, but since we were there for 3 hours, at least it provided some entertainment – and the opportunity to eavesdrop.

So on to the menu. We didn’t really look at it, having already decided on the tasting menu ($90 each)– it’s all on the website anyway. So orders in, we received our drinks and settled down for the evening. I should point out here that a couple of the courses I was quite interested in had changed (a seasonal thing) between the day we booked and the day we dined. Not a huge deal, but a warning the change was likely might have been nice.

In the spirit of the evening, I vowed to try everything. It turned out to be a night of firsts: first caviar, first foie gras, first truffle anything, first soufflé. I even ate a mushroom or two! So on to the courses.

 

Bread!

First we were presented with two small bread rolls each – one white with a good thick caking of flour on the base, and the other wholemeal. They were warm but not overly so, chewy, and tasted yeasty enough that they were obviously not commercially baked. Butter and olive oil to accompany, but frankly, oil gets nary a look-in with me where bread is concerned. I managed to make my bread last until about course 4. Sam didn’t.

 

Asparagus Cappuccino with Porcini Powder

The first course arrived promptly; a squat little whisky glass filled with foamy green soup, sprinkled with brown powder. Very definitely the best soup I have had in recent memory. It was hot enough without being –too- hot, with a good but not overpowering asparagus flavour. The powder didn’t add much more than a savoury edge, which was fine, and it was also full of tiny asparagus and mushroom niblets. Lord knows how much cream was in it…

 

Foie Gras Parfait with Apple Caramel and Pear Relish

This was served on a small rectangular dish: a pot of pink paté topped with the apple caramel, a small stack of very crunchy crostini, and a mound of chopped pears topped with microgreens. We were given extra crostini after Sam whined I had more than him – although it was fairly evident there was more paté than 6 crostini could handle. The foie gras was amazing – very smooth, very mild and extremely creamy. I do not want to know how much butter and or cream had been added to it – it was very light and not at all stodgy as some paté can be. The apple caramel was sweet-tart and cut through the richness of the paté perfectly, complemented by the pear relish – which admittedly got a little lost in the rest of the flavours. Definitely my favourite course.

 

Orange, Fennel and Asparagus Salad with Marinated Salmon, Citrus Dressing and Caviar

When we booked, this course was a crab and avocado salad, which I was quite looking forward to. I guess they’d had enough of that though, and it was salmon and caviar when we actually arrived to eat. One of my least favourite dishes, the salmon had been marinated in salt, pepper and basil for 8 hours. I’m not a big fan of basil, but at least it wasn’t coriander.

The salmon itself was kinda limp and flobbery, a few ragged slices cut from the fatty end of the fish. The caviar didn’t ‘pop’, but was fairly innocuously salty-fishy tasting. I’d try it again, but I wouldn’t go out of my way for it. The whole dish tended towards oiliness, but at least the addition of little strips of peel and orange segments cut through it a bit – it must be orange season; they showed up in one form or another in many of the courses. Oh, and some of the microgreens turned out to be coriander. Sadface.

 

Seared Scallops with Cauliflower Puree, Cep Mushrooms and Truffle Oil

Another killer course, and this from someone who hates mushrooms and is ambivalent about scallops. The shellfish were barely seared, still translucent in the centre, arranged with the mushrooms around a small mound of cauliflower puree. This stuff was amazing – definitely one of the best flavours of the night, sinfully rich and completely unable to be excused on the basis of being a ‘vegetable’. The mushrooms were perfectly edible but didn’t seem to have much flavour of their own, probably due to the truffle oil they’d soaked up. The oil itself tasted rich and slightly musky, but ’savoury’ would probably be the most suitable word for it. Or umami? Anyway, I loved it.

 

Roasted French Goats Cheese with Parma Ham, Beetroot Confit and Red Wine Syrup

This course really didn’t work for me either, although it sounded wonderful. I think it was probably due to being overwhelmingly flavoured; particularly the combination of strong salty cheese and equally strong and salty ham. The dish arrived as a small ball of cheese wrapped in parma ham, served on a slice of beetroot and caramelised onions, on top of a quite short crackery dealy and surrounded by the syrup.

I’m not sure whether this had dried out while sitting or not, but the ham was very tough – almost impossible to cut through. In fact, I wasn’t sure what it was to start with – it was leathery, chewy and had a strong musty taste, so strong I thought it could be mushroom. I ended up giving it to Sam as it completely overwhelmed everything else on the plate. With the ham banished, the cheese was less extreme, and the dish worked much better for me.

 

Crispy Roast Duckling with Mandarin Confit, Kumara Mash, Steamed Bok Choy and Jus of Oranges

or

Roasted Crayfish Tail with Sweet Carrot Puree, Almond Foam, Baby Cress and Mandarin Oil

OK, the duckling was the disappointment of the night for me, but the
crayfish was Sam’s favourite dish. Again, I don’t know if the course had been prepared a lot earlier in the evening and had dried out in the interim, but my duck was dry with skin that was not so much crispy as tough. Not tender confit meat by any stretch of the imagination, but dry and stringy like overcooked chicken leg. Which, incidentally, is what it tasted like. The kumara mash was nice and creamy, the bok choy barely cooked and rather tough to cut – pulling into strings rather than coming apart in leaves. The ‘mandarin confit’ was a small peeled mandarin. K.

By the way, I do feel guilty about it.

The crayfish (I had a bite) was presented with the shell on the side, the meat curled up amid a carrotty puree and an almond foam that looked a bit like the froth that washes up on Auckland beaches. The taste was mild, the almond an interesting note – it tasted almost like a mild sweet curry. In all, a mixed bag. The duckling is their signature dish, so I expected more from it. But Sam was happy with his, so yay.

 

Yoghurt Sorbet and Strawberry Cone

A little palette cleanser, this was kinda cute – two little cones presented
in a glass of rice. The cone was, amusingly, the same sort of recipe that goes into making fortune cookies – which we’d tried and failed to get made for work the week before. I appreciated the irony. The sorbet was nice – not astounding. It was somewhat tart, somewhat sweet, and being sorbet, a little watery tasting. The strawberry was a compote – basically a sexy jam. I’m not keen on jam, and this was your usually too-sweet dealy. I think it would have worked better with poached berries, or even simply macerated, so they had more of a tart edge. But then I am picky. We did enjoy sucking the dripping strawberry juice from the bottom of the cones though – very grown up.

 

Vanilla Panna Cotta with Mango Puree and Passionfruit Jelly

This was probably my favourite of the dessert courses. Or 2/3 of it was. It came in a large shot glass, layered from the bottom with pureed mango, panna cotta and soft passionfruit jelly. The panna cotta, basically a barely set creamy-gelatiny jobby, was wonderful. Very creamy, full of vanilla seeds. The passionfruit jelly was likewise fabulous – very intensely flavoured, and I love passionfruit anyway.

In comparison, the mango was watery and weak-flavoured, like pureed canned fruit. Probably a better ingredient to use when fresh mangoes are at their best – it really did detract from the overall dish. Showing my class, I took a couple of bites and announced to Sam that it tasted like Paradiso icecream, which I adore and will probably purchase sometime soon for about $10 less than this dessert costs at the restaurant. (2010 addition: can you even buy this in tubs any more? :( )

 

Warm Bitter Chocolate Souffle with Hot Chocolate Sauce, Mandarin Confit and Caramel Icecream

The dessert was originally a creme brulee, but had been changed to souffle when we dined. On a rectangular dish we were presented caramel icecream sitting on some mandarin segments (confit again, but what exactly that means in this case is lost on me), and topped with a shard of chocolate toffee, a tall shot glass of warm chocolate sauce, and a hot chocolate souffle.

The souffle was wonderful – rich but not too sweet, puffy and light. We sogged it up significantly by adding large dollops of chocolate sauce, which had a hazelnut note to it. The icecream tasted ‘creamy’ – like the cream from the dairy up the road that has an actual cream taste that makes me worry it’s about to go off. The mandarin segments really seemed out of place – the dish didn’t need them and they gave no particular class to the course. But hey, chocolate with more chocolate. Who could ask for more? Sam drank the unused ‘portion’ of his sauce. I left some, ’cause I’m not a little fat piggy.

The end

Very memorable dinner, very ritzy and very expensive. I’d try a tasting menu again, but probably try another restaurant for another perspective. I’m sure we’ll come here again, but at the price, it’s very definitely a special occasion venue.

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Yaaay…!