Title: Chevalier
Author: GCS
Last saved by: ENU

Chevalier in Lafayette, CA, update dinner
Summer dinner menu: http://0801.nccdn.net/1_5/0d4/293/30c/2011-Summer-Dinner-Menu.pdf
Review date: July 2011
(previous review appended below)

We visited Chevalier in March 2010 after some unsuccessful meals at various places in the Walnut Creek/Concord area. The best of these less-than-successful competitors was Le Bistro, which had talent but some conceptual flaws. 

Although the chef at Le Bistro was talented, his use of heavy cream sauces in Concord's 90° summers and cliched menu undermined our enjoyment. For a Provencal chef to be offering dishes better suited to Paris in winter is a sad commentary on how difficult it can be to cook in the classic/traditional style for a clientele not adventurous enough to enjoy something different. Thus, we get the endless offerings of French onion soup, steak frites and crème brulee ad nauseum, instead of pissaladiere and a decent Salad Nicoise.

On our first visit to Chevalier, Chef Philippe Chevalier offered us an interesting menu that was based on the classics, but it was still early summer and too cool to sit outside on their gorgeous patio area, so the food seemed reasonably appropos. 

It's disappointing that on neither visit we saw nothing of his experiences cooking in St. Tropez and the French West Indies. But he always has sweetbreads on the menu which is, for us, instant seduction. On that March 2010 visit, the dish was good but a touch overcooked, and very slightly oversalted. Also, we liked his concasse (tomatoes, basil, EVOO) but saw it repeated too often in different dishes.

We decided to give Chevalier another try, especially as we are scheduled to again visit Artisan Bistro in a couple of days, which is right down the street. We hold a high opinion of Artisan, so we thought a head-to-head competition would be interesting.

We ran into unseasonably cool weather (I cheer; Carlos grumbles) so once more it was too cool to sit outside, although it's mid-July. Nonetheless, we are coming off a week-long heat spell, and it's notable that despite the warmer temps in Lafayette compared to Oakland, the “Summer Months” menu is a bit on the heavy side, with duck liver mousse, snails in Burgundy butter, Boeuf Bourguignon, and the ever-present mussels in white wine. The only chicken dish available was on the 3-course pre-fixe, although there were several seafood dishes.

The a la carte has duck (doesn't everyone, these days?) although we were genuinely excited to see that it was offered a la orange, which we haven't seen in several decades. Both the duck and the 5-course tasting menu were very tempting, but we decided to go for some alternate choices from the a la carte menu instead. 

They bring hot bread to the table, very fine soft crumb with a moderately crisp crust. It tastes like commercial dough that they bake in-house, a sort of upscale Wonder Bread. 

Inez ordered the Boeuf Bourguignon, which comes with pasta that she found too 'al dente' for her taste. We insisted she send it back and they brought it back within ten minutes, the tagliatelle now much more to her liking. The serving was generous enough that she brought half of it home for lunch the next day.

Carlos got the French Onion soup again – he loves the stuff so he doesn't mind that everybody offers it. Chevalier's version uses a lot of red wine, but a sweeter, more full-bodied red than the one Montclair Bistro/Oakland uses in theirs. He enjoyed it and says he's getting accustomed to chefs using wine in the soup. This time it had a little too much wine for my taste. I particularly dislike the sauteed onions being deglazed with too much wine; I think they lose their flavor and just taste like mushy red wine. Still, he was fine with it although it lacked the wonderful body that a veal and beef stock has – only Post Meridian/Berkeley makes it the classic way.

The soup special was cauliflower bisque, with shavings of Parmesan and a decorative vertical sprinkle of what I thought was paprika, but turned out to be cayenne instead. It was all cream and butter and very good, so I shared some with Inez.

Carlos and I then shared the fig-prosciutto-goat cheese starter. This is very different in concept than the one we fell in love with at Riva Cucina/Berkeley. The figs are halved, stuffed with a little goat cheese, wrapped around with prosciutto and grilled. The prosciutto comes out cooked and was too salty for our taste. This dish just didn't come together to make a positive impact. 

I had the veal chop, which came with micromini-shiitake mushrooms – very cute. The trouble was, it also came with potatoes (okay) and artichoke hearts (untrimmed with tough outer leaves), along a superfluity of an otherwise delightful herbed brandy cream sauce. It was a great sauce, but there was too much of it and I thought it overwhelmed the veal completely. 

Even though the veal was definitely more baby-beef, it couldn't stand up to that clinging, superrich sauce. With a filet mignon it would have been perfect, but not with the veal. Maybe a touch of Marsala might have worked better, but not brandy and not in the quantity used. As it was, the sauce was delightful mopped up with bread, just not with my chop.

Carlos got the sweetbreads for his entree (last time we split this as our starter), but the dish has changed. The puff pastry is no longer a shell, but just a lonely top crust....except that it was hard and stale, and the flavor was mediocre. The sweetbreads were prepared the same as before – braised with tomato, wine, onions, and some rather aggressive herbs like rosemary and thyme.

And just as before, they were marginally overcooked and a little too salty. The serving is generous, but this overly herbaceous sauce was a mismatch with such a delicately flavored meat.

The waiter was well-trained as far as serving and clearing, but he was by himself with no busboy, so times were a bit longer than they should have been. Also, although he brought the dessert menu he failed to mention that the Grand Marnier souffle takes a full 25 minutes, which I would have liked to know before we placed our original order.

Balked of the souffle, I chose the old standby crème brulee as opposed to a Floating Island (I loathe meringue in any form except on top of lemon meringue pie). It was disappointingly cold underneath the crust, and way too sweet.

Carlos ordered the Crepes Suzette, which were different than the first visit, and no match for the superb version K&L Bistro/Sebastopol served us last month. The crepes were thick, they had rolled them into little tubes(!), and they were stingy with the sauce, which wasn't sweet enough. The sauce tasted only of thickened fresh orange juice, no Grand Marnier or butter. Carlos ended up snitching my sugar crust (which I don't eat anyway) and rolling it up in the crepes - “otherwise, I'm just eating pancakes,” he remarked unhappily.

When we're reading Chevalier's menu, we get excited about seeing updates on some much-loved dishes or ingredients long out of fashion. But this chef's style of cooking is just not ours. With the best will in the world, we are out of sync with him. He likes aggressive, wine-centered flavors and the food has that same edge that Oliveto/Oakland has, albeit with a heavier hand on the seasonings. 

If you drink, it's probably fine. Unfortunately, we don't. And so we wince at these hard edges (gastronomically speaking). We don't like where he's cut costs, and most importantly, we disagree with his sauce pairings. 

We can understand why people like Chevalier. It's pretty with a great outdoor space, has a civilized but not stuffy atmosphere – at two different tables parents had brought their teenaged children – the pre fixe and tasting are great bargains, and there's talent here.

But in the Bay Area, where Andre's Bouchee and La Folie and Bouchon are doing wonderful, inventive, exciting, classically-based French cooking with equal parts flair and balance, with Artisan cooking up their own Cal-French storm not half a mile away....Chevalier comes off as inferior to even the late Le Bistro, who at least got their sauces properly paired with the right meat selection. 

As a traditional bistro it can't hold a candle to Chapeau!/San Francisco or the super-casual La Note/Berkeley. This is one of those places people come to for very specific dishes, because they don't want to be traveling too far and maybe Artisan's a little too edgy and adult-oriented for a quick 'nice' dinner.

Three people: three starters, three entrees, two desserts, two coffees, with tip was $202.

Chevalier 
960 Moraga Road, Lafayette
http://www.chevalierrestaurant.com/menus.html
Review date:  March 2010

Chef/Owner Philippe Chevalier serves Provence-inspired French cuisine on the other side of the Caldecott Tunnel in Lafayette. Why the restaurants in Lafayette are more interesting than the ones in nearby Walnut Creek or Concord, we have yet to figure out, LOL.

Set in a three-store strip mall just off the main drag, Chevalier’s storefront is so small we missed seeing it entirely the first time. Only the authoritative “You have arrived!” voice on the GPS alerted us to reverse course and enter the tiny parking lot. (Note that the other two businesses close up in the evening, leaving the entire lot free for Chevalier diners)

Inside we found a pleasant, small, roughly rectangular dining room. The large side windows showed a wonderful outdoor dining patio, quite large and comfortable-looking. It was nicely landscaped with shrubs and mature trees around the perimeter. A Japanese maple is centered in a small middle bed, backlit into blazing gorgeousness by the setting sun, and can be seen whether you’re seated inside or outside. 

It was a little windy that evening, so we chose to dine inside. Chevalier has quite a large menu, not necessarily a good thing, but also very good waitstaff, which is good. Our waiter cheerfully confessed he usually works lunchtimes and this was only his second time for dinner service. As the meal progressed his timing was a little off, but the evening was so nice and sunny, the food good enough to keep us eager with anticipation, that we didn’t mind the few extra minutes it took him to circle back to us – and the more experienced waiter he was paired with took up the slack with professional aplomb so we could get our dessert order in.

Carlos started with the frog legs and I started with beet salad. The frog legs were battered and relatively tasteless – as far as I’ve ever been able to tell they’re always that way, so I wouldn’t blame it on Chevalier automatically – but the sauce was lovely, a wonderful tomato concassé so luscious that Carlos scooped up every drop of sauce with baguette slices.

The same flavorful but delicate EVOO perfumed my beets, which were in oddly large chunks but thankfully without a drop of vinegar. Served with tiny cubes of hard salty feta and minute slivers of fresh sugar snap pea beans, perfumed with a whiff of basil, it was a lovely small salad.

Then Carlos had (of course!) onion soup, being on a mission to sample it in as many different restaurants as possible. He isn’t terribly fond of the slight bitterness that wine gives to the broth, but I thought it was very good from the spoonful I had. The ratio of toasted crouton and cheese was perfect, but the serving was quite large (as was the frog legs’ dish).

We both opted for the sweetbreads vol au vent, while Inez chose the halibut with roasted vegetables. The halibut was good, nicely cooked but not terribly exciting, with a selection of roasted root vegetables underneath and a pesto drizzled over it. She’s not really a pesto fan, being more a cream-sauce-with-fish diner.

The sweetbreads were something of a let-down. For one thing they were slightly overcooked. For another, they were really salty. It wasn’t very crowded in the restaurant and when the waitstaff overheard us mentioning the salt – Carlos and I actually exchanged plates, as his was marginally less salty than mine – they offered to redo both plates, always a nice gesture. Chevalier actually came out of the kitchen to repeat the offer, but we declined with thanks.

Our waiter came back after we finished and said the chef had tasted the veal stock reduction and found it too salty for the sauce. It’s a common error, especially when the dish’s sauce has wine in it (which accentuates salt). I also had to wonder if they used heavily salted water to blanch the sweetbreads, because although they insisted there was no salt used in the sweetbreads, it’s usual to blanch the cleaned sweetbreads before sauteeing them, and these were definitely salted outside the actual sauce.

Although disappointing, the real issue I had with this dish was the sauce itself. It was far too similar to what was used on the frogs’ legs and a variant of what was used on Inez’s halibut. I have ranted against Le Bistro’s excessive use of heavy, cream based sauces, but Chevalier was showing too much of the same Mediterranean ingredients – tomato, garlic, basil and EVOO. 

The dishes we ordered ended up being too alike after a while, which is more a fault of our not being familiar with the menu and ordering wrong. OTOH, this is where a really expert waiter – a dying breed, to be sure – could have stepped in to suggest a starter or entrée that would contrast better on the palate.

We ended with crème brulee for Inez and Crepes Suzette (not flambeéd at the table, alas) for Carlos and I to share. The meal ended on a high note for us – we ordered cappuccinos as usual, decaf for me and regular for Carlos.

Now, usually Carlos eschews cappuccino when he’s having dessert (neither of us adds sugar to our coffee). This time he ordered one anyway, and we were very glad he did. Chevalier’s makes cappuccinos the way no one else seems to understand – milk foam on top of properly bitter double espressos, with NO milk poured into the coffee. 

As a result the cappuccinos tasted as close as anyone’s gotten to our home-brew of Peet’s Italian roast in a super-fine grind, with just a nice froth of milk foam on top. It was superlative against the sweetness of the Grand Marnier sauce in the Crepes Suzette – another one of those long-vanished classic dishes that younger diners have never seen – so despite the disappointment on the sweetbreads, we were pleased with Chevalier and want to return to try some other dishes.

Because we refused the offer to redo the sweetbreads, they took one of them off the bill. So three starters, two entrees, two desserts, three beverages, with tip totaled only $144.

Chevalier still needs to prove itself to us, but it was promising enough that it will lure us back – especially with that stunning outdoor dining as summer approaches!