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Selecting restaurants to review each week requires pondering a mix of cuisines, neighborhoods, prices, hotel dining, dress codes (they went out with the ark, I think), whether a place is BYOB and the ever-growing list of beer-generated eateries.
I looked forward to lunching at Amuse in the Le Meridien Hotel. It is French through and through and opened in the spring.
Le Meridien is a boutique hotel. The dining room is to the right of the bar and kitted out in white, gray and red. I sat down in a comfortable chair and looked over the menu.
“Do you know about our three martini lunch?,” the hostess asked as she set this menu on the table. “You don’t have to drink martinis, but if you order the lunch we will give you vouchers for three martinis.”
This was intriguing, since the only people who sip three gin-and-vermouth cocktails at lunch are the characters on “Mad Men.” At lunch you must order onion soup and skirt steak. The cost is $30. Not bad, but I thought it too heavy for noontime.
Iced tea ($3) arrived in a pretty individual glass pitcher you pour as you go. I ordered onion soup ($8) and a croque monsieur. I sipped my tea and a server brought me a marvelous amuse bouche. It was a tasty crab cake topped with a basil aioli that was, indeed, enjoyed in one bite. My server later brought me a warm loaf of homemade baguette nestled in a white paper bag. The butter was soft and served in a small white ceramic cloche.
I soon realized I was going to dig into the baguette. I asked my server to kindly cancel my sandwich and switched to the frisee salad ($10).
Chef Dan Black and his staff know the proper way to prepare and bake authentic French onion soup. It arrived hot in its own tureen with a toasted crouton floating in the slightly sweet, rich, homemade broth topped with Gruyére. It made me most content.
Only the French could invent topping a salad with a perfectly poached egg. What arrived was a mix of fresh, light greens and curly frisee. I broke the egg and the yolk oozed over the greens. The albumin was perfect — neither runny nor hard.
I decided to go to dinner the next evening. The dining room was empty, so I sat at the bar. I sipped a martini and studied the menu. The barkeep told me Restaurant Week was in full swing and the choices were inside Amuse’s dinner menu.
The $35 three-course meal I selected was salad, steak frites and pots du crème. Fresh white-and-green asparagus were listed as a starter. The spears were trimmed and beautifully cooked. They retained a bit of crispness, yet were not stringy or raw.
The salad arrived in a bowl topped with thinly sliced radishes in a light vinaigrette. A duplicate of the lunch baguette accompanied my salad.
Steak frites are the French version of meat and potatoes. Black uses skirt or hanger steak. It was charred on the outside, medium-rare on the inside and so tender, I could have cut it with a butter knife. He included ramekins of béarnaise, ketchup and pesto. The fries were crisp and hot and required just a bit of sea salt.
The wine list at Amuse is, well, amusing. You can order by the glass, half carafe or by the bottle. I sipped a half carafe of Malbec ($13.50), which was most pleasing on a muggy, rainy night.
Pots du crème are the French version of chocolate pudding. It was rich, dark and dense. The whipped cream topped with fragrant fresh mint made this sweet a 10.
During dinner, I struck up conversations with three flight attendants, a gentleman who wanted a Miller Light (we talked him into his first Yuengling Lager and he was not disappointed), a father and son in the cyberspace business and two young men from my hometown; one is a bartender, the other an environmentalist at Drexel.
A pot of English breakfast tea ($3), a snifter of Cognac ($11) and conversation ended my perfect evening at Amuse.
Three authentic French tips of the toque to Amuse.
Amuse in Le Meridien Hotel
1421 Arch St.
215-422-8222
www.amusephiladelphia.com
40587249
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