restaurant review: chou chou, san francisco

[rone]

2wanda and i went to dinner with strychnine and Gina to their favorite French bistro, Chou Chou.  In a word, fantastic.  Upon arrival, we were brought complimentary cocktails (James and Gina are regulars, you see) by the sommelier, Germain, which turned out to be soju with lavender syrup and a dash of lime juice; a tad too sweet for me, but a very novel taste.  Kim and i shared their tiger prawn salad, which is one very large prawn cooked and split over arugula and spinach, with a lime dressing, green peppercorns, and capers.  James and Gina had the ostrich carpaccio appetizer, which they loved (i snuck a taste... very tasty), and we were brought a complimentary escargot appetizer in a garlic & mustard sauce; i wasn't eager to try it, given my previous escargot experience, but everyone else was so impressed by it that i was convinced to give it another shot.  It was much better than i expected (even the mustard sauce was not instantly offensive in my mouth).

For dinner, Kim had filet mignon and i had the seafood cassoulet.  James and Gina mirrored our choices.  The cassoulet was squid, clams, and a huge scallop and prawn in a crab bisque sauce (which definitely had a generous amount of saffron), in a clay dish, surrounded by pastry.  Cassoulet fans will be surprised to hear there were no beans in it, but i sure didn't miss them.  The wine was a `97 St. Julien Bordeaux; its cost was half the tab (!), but it was definitely superb.

For dessert, we each had variants of the chocolate tarte; Kim and James had the chocolate mandarin, Gina had the chocolate cherry, and i had the triple chocolate (of course).  The ladies each had a muscat dessert wine and we men each had a glass of sweet Banyuls.

Service was wonderful.  I highly recommended it.

Comments

[mrbalihai.livejournal.com]

The soju cocktail sounds hideous, but in an intriguing way.

[matrushkaka.livejournal.com]

Seafood cassoulet. Now that's interesting; so in place of duck fat, they used crab bisque, yes?

[glitter-ninja.livejournal.com]

How'd you get so much complimentary food?

This makes me jealous, because I was all set to blow all my money on a good local restaurant tomorrow night, but mom suckered me into going to her house this weekend for a holiday we don't celebrate.

Not a cassoulet...

[eejitalmuppet.livejournal.com]

But in France in January, I had scallops which came on a bed of green lentils (with just a little bacon in the lentils, to conform with your rules of food). Iwooried a little that the lentils/bacon component might overwhelm the scallops, but the flavours were superbly balanced. Your seafood cassoulet sounds fabulous.

Escargot doesn't really do it for me: it's OK, but the texture doesn't thrill me.

Oh, and '97 was a spectacular year for some French wines (and for many Riojas and Chiantis, elsewhere in Europe).

[some_other_dave]

Dumb question(s) time.

What is soju? And what is a banyul? From context, I would assume they are liqueurs (sp?), but I have never heard of them before.

Myself, with desert I like a ruby-style port.