Cafe
Barbette
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| Bohemian Bistro | Mettez le feu à l'artillerie! | |
| I used to be a
Francophile, until a few too many business trips to petrochemical
complexes in the départements jaded me. Yet I’ve often rued
the lack of a casual bistro in the Twin Cities, someplace one could go
for a simple but good lunch without the fanfare or formality that seems
to go with the local French dining scene. I’d even settle for the
cafeteria meals I’ve had in French refineries—this being one respect
in which refineries in France trump their American competitors.
Café Barbette to the rescue! Not that it can be readily pigeonholed as authentically (or idiosyncratically) French, but the attention to ingredients and food preparation, with a Euro flair but without the three-dollar-sign "elegant" self-image, isn’t readily found around here. Much of the menu is in fact authentically French, but not the high-falutin variety: omelets, croque monsieur, a fruit and cheese plate, quiches, salade Niçoise (with quail egg), steak au poivre. Inserting a touch of the Midwest in Gall, the crêpes, which can be ordered with a variety of fillings, are made of buckwheat. I had one of the two quiche specials that day, with ham and red peppers and leek. It was quite good, the crust light and flaky, especially at the sides, and the filling effecting the right compromise between moist and dry. Accompanying it on the plate was an arugula salad with a dressing that carried a lemon-juice zing. The wine list is pan-European, with a number of by-the-glass offerings from France, Italy, and Spain in particular. I had a glass of a tempranillo blend from Portugal; a satisfactory selection for a bistro lunch. Barbette’s service gets high marks in my book too. My companion was plying our waitress with questions—no doubt his review is better informed as a consequence—and she was cheerfully accommodating despite being occupied with the sizable lunch business. Just looking around the place, one gets the impression that the restaurant is a pursuit of a calling more than an entrepreneurial venture. There’s eclectic art on the walls, fanciful (but not fancy) tilework on pillars, and color combinations that you can be sure did not come from Martha Stewart’s catalog. There’s an attempt at kitsch, but it works—primarily because the artistic vision isn’t at the expense of execution in the kitchen. Uptown used to be known as a punk/Bohemian hangout many years ago, but it has steadily been losing this character over the last decade plus. The new shops and restaurants are targeting either the higher end of the economic spectrum or the see-and-be-seen crowd (and usually both). The space that Barbette is in used to host Café Wyrd until a year or two ago, a coffeehouse that was one of the few places remaining that continued the spirit of the old Uptown. When I heard that Wyrd was making way for a new restaurant, I was almost certain that another "upscaling" of the neighborhood was in progress. Eating at Barbette was therefore doubly refreshing. I would have enjoyed my bistro lunch regardless of the socioeconomic subtext, but it was also encouraging to see a gentrification trend being successfully resisted. A |
So what do
you know about Vander Clyne? Let me tell you what I have discovered: a
Texan, who lived in Paris – performed as a trapeze artist in drag –
under the sobriquet of Barbette. The (relatively) new French bistro Barbette
prompted this research, our lunch venue of the week. The word Barbette
also means a raised mound of earth from which artillery guns can safely
fire over a parapet. Considering that this is the same space formerly
occupied by the now defunct Café Wyrd, I feel safe in assuming
that it was named after a cross-dressing gay Parisian rather than a
military term! Or perhaps there is a pun here that I am too dim to spot.
The restaurant is cramped for space; this is not surprising since the original space was designed for a coffee bar. This can cause problems for people who are averse to having cigarette smoke waft in their direction because there is no room to segregate smokers. There is an air of gentle pandemonium about the place with waiters rushing through the narrow spaces between the tables. Having said that the décor is attractive and innovative. There is art evocative of the 1920s on the wall, the exception being a large (4’ X 7’) Rubenesque style painting which seems out of place. The roof is a bright red (reminiscent of a big top?). Service is good from a wait staff that is hip (as you might expect) in a tattooed, pierced and dyed sort of way; youthful enthusiasm more than making up for the inexperience. Kingsley Amis once famously said that the French were the best cooks in the world, for where else could you cook slugs and beetles in bat urine and make it edible? Happily those ingredients are not to be found at Café Barbette. The menu is a little thin in entrees but should provide for most tastes. There are regular items on the menu which have daily variations to them: quiche of the day, omelet of the day, daily fruit and cheese selection, soup & half sandwich special and you get the idea. There are three salads on the menu: salad nicoise, ceasar salad and a cobb salad. I passed on the salad nicoise, even though it sounded delightful, because I had my sight firmly set on the chef’s organic buckwheat crêpes. This is an interesting dish where you get to choose the filling for the crêpes from choices like smoked salmon, spinach, Gruyère and chicken; I choose the spinach and salmon and the crêpes came wonderfully textured. This is an amazing dish and reason enough to lunch at Barbette! Some of the other entrees are a grilled Wisconsin ham and Gruyère cheese croquette known as the Croque Monsieur and its female counterpart the Croque Madam. To drink I had a glass of the Bordeaux Rouge 1998 that came in an unpretentiously fat stemmed glass (filled to the brim!) and complimented the crêpes well. The wine list is carefully chosen and priced right for lunch. The beer list includes a few Belgian ales – which is no bad thing.Our bill came to about $30.00. Barbette is definitely place that I would recommend for lunch. There are a few things that the owners could do to improve the dining experience. First, proscribe smoking – there is no room for it! Secondly (and this is the hard part) try and get some room between tables. On the flip side, if they’re trying to capture a French bistro experience, which is cramped and smoky, then they have it down perfect! B |
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