Bistro du Glace (Closed)
cuisine: French bistro
entrées: $16 – $29
address: 158 Main Street, Deep River
phone: (860) 526-2200
credit cards: Visa, MasterCard, American Express
4 1/2 stars… Special
Food writers wax poetic about the classic French bistro, but in recent years, that beloved institution has been on the wane in Connecticut. Some have gone gently into that good night, like Côte d’Azur in South Norwalk, Bistro Le Trocadero in Wilton, Chez Pierre in Stafford Springs, Pastis in Hartford and Chez Stephane in Westport. Others, reflecting changing gastronomic trends, have morphed into more contemporary Gallic eateries that draw inspiration from around the globe. And that’s certainly not a bad thing. But most of us still have a soft spot in our hearts for the classic French bistro food of yore.
And if our heads tell our hearts that they couldn’t endure a daily diet of French bistro food, then let our responses come from the heart. Let our hearts argue that we don’t aspire to eat French bistro classics daily but maybe weekly, that butter was discovered to be healthier than margarine, that we’re willing to counter that cholesterol with plenty of cheap French table wine. Let our hearts point out that the French manage to eat French food daily and they seem slimmer (perhaps it’s the smoking?), sexier (the attitude?), healthier (the walking?) and happier (the joie de vivre?) than we.
French bistro food may be on the wane in these parts now, but it always seems to stage a comeback. It comes back because it’s irresistible. It comes back because there will always be a demand for it. It comes back because, when we have a craving for pâté de campagne, escargots bourguignons, coq au vin or cassoulet toulousain, anything else seems to be a comedown.
So it’s nice for a change to be able to offer some good news when it comes to this beloved institution. In quiet Deep River, a new French restaurant called Bistro du Glace is making a big splash. Quite possibly the hottest new restaurant in Middlesex County, the bistro is owned by Bill and Jackie Von Ahnen, along with partner Douglas (“du Glace”) Holt. Deep River is actually doubly fortunate, because attached to the bistro is a cheerful pâtisserie with glass showcases full of tempting delicacies. Both Von Ahnens are 1984 graduates of the Culinary Institute of America (who reconnected years later), with Bill the executive chef and Jackie the pâtissiere. Knowing that bakery and bistro hours are almost mirror opposites, we couldn’t help wondering how these poor married souls ever manage to see one another.
Their loss is definitely our gain. We appreciate the owners’ good taste in converting the squat, square building into side-by-side ventures. We like the black signage with gold lettering, the front painted a handsome burgundy, the French and American flags fluttering proudly side by side. But it’s inside the bistro that their good taste is really made known.
The high-ceilinged space could have been just another one of those modern industrial interiors that we are coming to expect of new openings in our cities. Instead, tasteful, flexible decision-making has led to one of my favorite restaurant ambiances in the entire state. When the interior of the 100-year-old building was excavated, towering brick arches were discovered. Most restaurateurs would have continued relentlessly upon whatever path they had set out, but the three owners were smart enough to stop and reappraise the space. They brought in the Von Ahnens’ next door neighbor, talented painter Rick Silberberg, who filled the arches with Toulouse-Lautrec-style paintings—and the effect is nothing short of magical.
As if charm wasn’t enough, Bistro du Glace offers good value. Begin with the wine list ($19-$117), which is predominantly French and American with a smattering of other countries represented. There are numerous drinkable wines priced in the $20s. A nice throwback, there are carafes ($17) and half-carafes ($9) of red and white French table wine, and wines by the glass start at just $4.50. On an initial scouting visit (I often pay restaurants a first visit on my own dime to see whether they’re worth my time and energy), we enjoyed a spicy, tannic 2006 Domaine de Montvac, Côtes du Rhône-Vacqueyras, France ($29). On our review visit, the staff recommended a 2004 Paul Jaboulet Aîné “Les Jalets,” Crozes-Hermitage, France ($38), a Syrah with enough guts to stand up to the assertive bistro flavors we were about to enjoy. Our Chardonnay lover sipped glasses of 2006 Château La Baume, France ($9.50). There’s also a more than usually enlightened beer selection (bottles $3.75-$4.25, drafts $5).
I’m not one to comment much on restaurant prices, feeling that restaurants will soon perish if they charge more than the market can bear, but I would be doing readers a disservice if I didn’t stress that Bistro du Glace’s are quite reasonable. Combined with great food in quantities likely to generate leftovers, this restaurant provides much more bang for the buck than most Frenchies do. On the constantly changing menu, one can find some terrific bargains. One night it’s a brandade de morue, a hefty codfish cake for just $4. Another night it’s a bacon leek tart with mesclun salad for $7. Yet another night it might be a flounder meunière entrée generous enough for two people for $18. Expect a little whimsy. On our first visit, coq au vin (half a chicken!) was $19, on our second, it had been reduced to $17. The owners want the bistro to remain inexpensive.
Another reason I don’t normally emphasize prices is that Americans are too focused on value and seem all too willing to sacrifice quality to get it. The French, the Spanish and the Italians are all savvy judges of the quality of meats, seafoods and produce, and they will pay what they must to obtain food that meets their exacting standards. We Americans, on the other hand, don’t seem to realize that freshness is almost as important with meat and produce as it is with seafood. Few Americans pay sufficient heed to the quality of seafood, either. Too many of us will trumpet the restaurant that produces the highest mountain of heavily breaded, tough-as-a-tire fried calamari. Fortunately, judging by the improving quality of fried calamari that I have been witnessing over the last five years, that may be changing.
Bistro du Glace manages to provide good value without making any concessions to quality that I could detect. Our meals began with one lovely light Gruyère cheese puff apiece. Normally, we might have requested another round, but the puffs turned out to be a prelude to nice dinner rolls and olive bread baked in the pâtisserie.
For narrative purposes, I’ll combine my two visits. I wouldn’t normally feel compelled to reveal the underpinnings of a food piece, but I’m mindful of the recent Hartford Courant flap over poetic license taken by Elissa Altman in her Prime Steakhouse review. Such license may be taken by critics to improve narrative flow, to conceal identity and to obfuscate budgetary restrictions. In a positive review, I see no harm in such taking of license, but in a negative review likely to affect a business and individuals adversely, every circumstance may take on greater significance.
Bistro du Glace’s selection of starters was wide-ranging, but one after the next proved to be executed with panache. There’s not too much that can go wrong with escargots bourguignons ($11), overcooking being the greatest risk, but these snails served out of their shells in an escargot dish in butter, garlic and parsley were plump and tender.
Plenty can go wrong with frogs legs ($11), believe it or not, and Bistro du Glace’s were simply the best any of us had ever had. An awful lot of amphibians have gone into the making of that statement. For those who haven’t yet tried them, frogs legs are similar in taste to chicken (more odd meats that I’ve tried are similar to beef than chicken, conventional wisdom or humor notwithstanding). Bistro du Glace serves them à la grenobloise in long gangly twinned pairs of legs, emphasizing their amphibious origins. Most American restaurants at least separate the legs and some break them down at the joints. It’s worth getting past their appearance, because this “other white meat” was just phenomenal with brown butter, capers, chopped tomato, parsley, lemon juice and veal stock. Even my squeamish companion finished his, although he didn’t pick them up, gnaw at them and lick his fingers afterwards, as the other two of us did.
Also worth dismantling in pursuit of every delicious morsel was grilled quail ($13) served with a lentil salad and cranberry compote. Real foodies know that the closer you get to your food, the more you tussle with it, the greater your appreciation of it will be. That’s why a number of more enlightened, less rigid cultures emphasize eating with one’s fingers for greater pleasure. Other items that by their nature cry out for eating with fingers include: chicken wings, barbecued ribs, asparagus spears, pieces of sushi, shrimp with shell still attached to prevent shrinkage and the meat still on the bone of a porterhouse steak.
The remaining starters we tried were fork, knife and spoon material. Among the best was Bistro du Glace’s crab cake ($6), which used no breading but was bound with a shrimp mousse. It was presented with a mustard cream sauce that had a nice snap but still allowed the crab flavor to shine through. Just as fried calamari is a standard that has vastly improved of late, I notice more restaurants serving really fine crab cakes. I guess with so many good recipes readily available on the internet, there’s no excuse for serving bad ones anymore. Bistro du Glace’s crab cakes were among the best and most interesting we had tried.
In the same vein as a crab cake, yet wonderful and different in its own way, was the aforementioned codfish cake ($4). This renowned Provençal fishcake was crusted with potato, the salt-cured cod offset beautifully by a pretty pale moat of chive cream sauce. Also from the sea were Prince Edward Island mussels ($9) in a lovely white wine broth laced with bay leaf and thyme, a slice of grilled ciabatta balancing on the bowl’s rim. Another winner was grilled housemade garlic sausage ($8) with diablo sauce and a nice warm potato salad. But I have been saving mention of my favorite appetizer for last, the incredible bacon leek tart ($7) served on a bed of mesclun salad dressed in a red wine-balsamic vinaigrette. I don’t know if I could visit Bistro du Glace again without ordering this treat.
Bacon also added appeal to a chicory salad ($6) in a warm vinaigrette with great chunks of bacon, a glorious throwback to halcyon days before the health food revolution. Probably more sensible, and no less delightful, was a salad special ($7) featuring assorted greens with slices of roasted beet (that resembled jellied cranberry sauce), walnut, Golden Delicious apple and goat cheese in a raspberry vinaigrette.
The final starters we tried were a pair of soups. The hot potato and leek ($6) may have been a very well-mannered purée, but it was quite nice. However, most visitors find the creamy, Normandy-style onion soup ($7) a revelation, the duck stock laced with cider and Gruyère.
Having finished our starters, it was time to start our “finishers.” And believe me, some of Bistro du Glace’s entrées couldn’t have been designed with finishing them at one sitting in mind. In other words, they’ll finish you. Or they’ll make wonderful leftovers, adding even more value to the meal. That’s certainly true of the aforementioned coq au vin ($17), which gained tremendous flavor from marinating three days in red wine, port and Madeira, then was finished with Dijon mustard, tomato paste, sugar and cocoa powder. It would take a pretty serious eater to get through the cassoulet ($24) as well, which included duck sausage, duck confit, big squares of slab bacon and white beans. And just forget trying to finish the sautéed calves liver ($17) in a bacon cream sauce with pommes dauphinoise. When our waitress asked how I wanted my liver cooked, I should have given a witty response, like “In good Scotch. Could you bring me another?” Instead, I answered “chef’s taste,” which I will sometimes do when a chef has gained my confidence or when I’m curious what choice he or she would make, and the meat came back soft, pink and rich.
The other entrées we tried were slightly more manageable. Still enough food for two, three deliciously fresh fillets of winter flounder meunière ($18) were done in the “miller’s style,” namely, lightly dusted with flour and sautéed in butter, lemon juice and parsley. Sweetbreads ($23) were beautifully, lightly cooked, still a little pink, their natural creaminess enhanced by a Vermouth cream sauce. Breast and leg of grilled duck ($24) were served in an Irouléguy sauce (made with a Tannat-dominated wine blend from the Pyrenees) with wild rice risotto. Pretty slices of wild boar were fanned out like duck breast around a pile of good buttery mashed potato and served in a chasseur sauce, namely, a hunter’s brown sauce of veal demi-glace, white wine, mushrooms and shallots. After this tour de force of French bistro cooking, we concluded that no one alive could tell that Von Ahnen is American-born from his food.
Although we had eaten prodigious amounts of wonderful rich food, we couldn’t resist further gilding the fleur-de-lis with dessert. Who’s going to pass on sweets when they’re supplied from the owners’ own pâtisserie? Ironically, despite the name Bistro du Glace, ice cream doesn’t appear anywhere on the dessert menu. Nor does it turn out to be missed.
There were only four desserts offered during our two visits—all wonderful. We can forgive a French restaurant for serving vanilla crème brûlée ($5), especially when it’s perfect, as it was here; the question is, why does practically every other nationality of restaurant have to serve it, too? But we don’t encounter many chocolate bombes ($6). In fact, when I see “bombe,” my mind wanders to sixties and seventies cinematic farces set on the Continent where the bomb was invariably concealed in the bombe. Concealed in this bombe beneath a layer of chocolate ganache were both chocolate and white chocolate mousse fillings.
A candidate, I suppose, for glace, Bistro du Glace’s hot apple tart ($6) was served instead with a Calvados crème anglaise that distracted less from the nice rectangular crust and lovely apple slices than ice cream would have. But our favorite dessert was the pear and frangipane tart ($5), topped with slivered almonds and served in a pool of crème anglaise, for which I would travel far and wide.
It’s the sign of a sensational restaurant when you visit a second time, as I did, relegated to ordering nothing but your second choices, and like them as well or better than your first picks. Thank you, Bistro du Glace, for breathing new life into a favorite food genre.