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Fri, 06 Jun 2008

The French Cafe

I don't tend to write a lot about bad food or restaurant experiences, since there are so many other interesting things to write about, as well as the fact that I don't consider myself a restaurant reviewer in the standard sense. Once in a while, though, something so bizarre and appalling happens that it's, well, hard not to write about it.

Such is the case regarding last Friday night's dinner at the French Cafe in Omaha. A couple of years ago Maggie and I were walking around the Old Market, Omaha's restored cafe/restaurant/bar/gallery district, enroute to M's Pub which is our favorite place in Omaha, along with Sakura Bana (the former Sushi Ichiban). We walked by the French Cafe, and I looked in the window and saw a beautifully-appointed dining room with white linens and good stemware, and some well-dressed patrons enjoying their dinner at a window table. I looked at the menu, though not in great detail, and probably took in a few self-laudatory review clippings and local award plaques, and suggested we have dinner there instead. Maggie was dubious, and in any case, we were in very casual clothes, so we continued on to M's and had a great dinner.

In the intervening years we've had another couple of dinners at M's and a few other places in Omaha, but I'd always been dying to try the French Cafe, "Omaha's most sophisticated and romantic French Restaurant" (and similar utterances from guidebooks and local reviewers) and so it was on my short list of places to try, along with the Flatiron Cafe. And last week an opportunity came up. Maggie was leaning toward the Flatiron, but I was looking for some authentic French food, which I adore. We had a great time in Paris last fall (more in a future post) and a place with bistro or brasserie classics and a good wine list seemed just the thing. Maggie graciously agreed, and I made a reservation for 7 o'clock Friday.

Friday rolled around, and the traffic from Lincoln to Omaha was brutal. We made it to the Old Market, which was packed with throngs of weekend merrymakers, at about 7 on the dot, and I figured I'd better give them a call so they wouldn't give our table away. But before I could, we found a convenient parking lot and made haste to the French Cafe.

As we rounded the corner, I noticed something odd, which in retrospect was the first ill omen -- not one of the French Cafe's outdoor tables was in use. (It was one of the first nice evenings after a week of terrible weather, and every other restaurant in the Old Market was full to overflowing.) I shrugged, and in we went.

Arrival was a bit of a surprise -- there's a foyer bar, but there was no one there, just a bartender polishing the bar. A maitre d' arrived and seated us in the dining room. The room is a beautiful space, a large, single room, with high ceilings and black walls, with a large black and white photomontage (20x30 feet?) with scenes of France. But at 7 PM on a Friday night, there were only 4 tables in use.

I still didn't quite grok that there was anything wrong. OK, Parisians dine at 9 or 10, perhaps it attracts a late crowd. And so we sat, admiring the room but a bit puzzled about the lack of attention. Finally, a waiter appeared -- a very young man, just out of high school -- who asked if we wanted a wine list. OK, sure, fine... but no mention of menus. He fetched the wine list and returned, and then stood over us, perhaps expecting a wine order. After a moment he brightened. "Would you like... menus?" After an inexplicable delay, he fetched the menus and returned. Maggie mentioned that she'd like an aperitif, and I asked where they might be on the wine list. "Aperitifs...ah, hmmm... let's see... here they are!" He indicated the dessert wines. Eeek! OK, it was going to be a long evening.

Eventually (after several round trips to the bar on the waiter's part) we settled on Dubonnet and studied the menu and wine list. The menu was at least plausible, though not particularly French, and looked like what you might find at the dining room at a chain business hotel. But I was going to have French food, damn it, full speed ahead, and we chose the only two French items from the appetizer menu -- beef tartare and escargot with garlic butter.

The wine list, on the other hand, was completely risible. The French Cafe was supposedly renowned for its wine list, so I had expected a little bit of breadth and depth in the French wines. Instead, there were six randomly-selected Bordeaux, none of them particularly notable, averaging around $35-40/bottle. (In other words, your corner liquor store probably has them beat.) But then across the page was the reserve list, which contained four additional Bordeaux -- each of which were over $400/bottle! So if you want to drink a good French wine that is priced between $45 and $400, the French Cafe is clearly not your place.

I seriously doubt that anyone ever orders the reserve Bordeaux, but if you are tempted, note also that there are two Owner's Reserve wines -- only one bottle of each available -- a 1959 Chateau Latour ($2400) and a 1982 Romanée-Conti ($4900). But beware! Below those bottles is a note which is the most offensive and preposterous thing I've ever seen on a wine list: "On these antiques, once the bottle is opened there will be no refunds." Pardon me? Is the owner inviting patrons to bet several thousand dollars on whether he has properly cellared some rare wine? And if it has turned to vinegar, apparently the joke's on you! Dunno about the rest of you, but if I want to gamble, I'll go to Vegas.

The escargot arrived (with only one snail fork... perhaps that's all they have?), and were no better than mediocre, for $12. One of them had a huge hole in the shell, leading me to wonder about its provenance. (The escargot at M's Pub, around the corner, are masterful. Go there instead.)

And then came the tartare. Maggie and I are raw beef fans, and in Paris had a lovely dinner at Alan Dutournier's PINXO which featured both a carpaccio and a tartare of beef. This tartare, though, was strangely dark and glassy, and a single sniff and taste was enough to reveal that the beef had gone off. As it went back to the kitchen I realized the fault was partially mine -- this was a place where someone probably orders the tartare about once a month, and the poor thing had sat around expectantly until it could wait no longer. We replaced it with some crab cakes, which were adequate but seemed like they had come from a catering vendor.

To cut quickly to the chase, the main courses were pretty much as our expectations dictated by that point. My duck a l'orange [sic] ($33) ranged from indifferent (the leg confit) to nearly inedible (the breast), with utterly awful orange sauce, and a perfunctory set-up of rice and exactly three stalks of asparagus. (Oh, and they burned the skin on the confit.) Maggie's rack of lamb ($39) was tough, weirdly-portioned, and while reasonably flavorful, it was inferior to what you'd get anywhere else at half the price. Our bottle of Bordeaux (Chateau Lyonnat, 2005, $44; the wine list said 2003, leading to another round of apologies by the waiter) was unremarkable. Desserts varied -- I had the chocolate lava cake with ice cream ($9) which was reasonably successful, Maggie a strawberry mousse ($9.50) which was less so.

But the point of all this is that the French Cafe, in 2008, is simply a terrible restaurant. The entire scene was like an episode of Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares, except there was no happy ending, just a bill for $225 for a ghastly experience. Even though this place still seems to attract favorable reviews in local papers and travel guides, it's an embarrassment to Omaha, which has been building a respectable, contemporary restaurant scene. But at the French Cafe there is absolutely no sign that anyone connected with this restaurant has ever been to France or was trained in French cooking: it's like a moment frozen in time, a Midwestern version of a French restaurant, circa 1972. Even a menu based on Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking would have been a vast improvement. This, on the other hand, was food you might find at an indifferent chain hotel or budget cruise ship, at big-city prices.

Needless to say, I've eaten better elsewhere at a fraction of the price. I've probably eaten better at Denny's. Heck, I've eaten better on airplanes...in coach. It puzzles me how the French Cafe remains in business -- there were no more than 5 parties seated at an time we were there -- but it has a great location and a lovely room, and and is just crying out for a complete makeover. Hello? Gordon Ramsay? Anyone?

A full set of photos from the evening can be found on Maggie Osterberg's Flickr photostream.

Posted at 21:27 | permanent link

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