Le Petit Cafe
cuisine: Contemporary French
four course prix-fixe: $48.50
address: 225 Montowese Street, Branford
phone: (203) 483-9791
credit cards: Visa, Mastercard, American Express
5 Stars… Extraordinary
Good things come in small packages
As foreseen by Alvin Toffler of Future Shock in 1970, the modern trend has been toward miniaturization. Calculators, cameras, computers and other electronic items have steadily shrunk in recent decades. Even our cars are finally starting to follow suit. The possibilities of miniaturization are so far-reaching I’m surprised no one has embedded locator chips in babies yet. Or straying spouses. Or have they?
A forty-eight seat restaurant with a small name has made a very big name for itself in recent years. Located on the eastern edge of the Branford Green, Le Petit Café continues to confound and astound with some of the freshest, lightest, tastiest cooking Nutmeggers have ever seen. This contemporary French eatery’s success and popularity are confirmed by tying, year in and year out, for either first or second place for overall food in the Zagat Survey for Connecticut. The latest edition even shows the bistro tied for second in service.
The mastermind behind Le Petit Café, Roy Ip, also has one of the smallest—or at least, shortest—names in the business. He and his graceful wife, Winnie Lui, who manages the front of the house, make up one of Connecticut’s most beloved restaurant couples. Always precocious son Kevan, whom I have watched grow up since his days as a toddler, has redone the website (LePetitCafe.net) to make it more interactive at the tender age of thirteen.
Over the years, I have used Le Petit Café as a destination restaurant to commemorate major events, as a cozy place for family gatherings, as a sophisticated place to impress out-of-town visitors, as a romantic place to dine with my stunning wife, and as a last-minute cure for the culinary doldrums after seeing too much dull or substandard food. What I don’t use the restaurant for is a light meal because, although most dishes are cooked lightly and healthfully, the four-course, prix-fixe dinner guarantees that no one goes home hungry.
While Le Petit Café isn’t budget dining, it happens to be a great deal when one considers what it delivers. Unlike most prix fixes specials that have sprung up in response to our ailing economy, Le Petit Café offers a four-course extravaganza. Diners are plied with their choice of appetizer, a house salad, their choice of entrée, and finally, their choice of dessert. Alcoholic beverages and coffee or tea are extra.
Other little amenities add up to a very big dining experience. Organic French country bread is baked fresh from scratch every day, the crusty loaves served with a sumptuous truffle butter also made in house. An assortment of Provençal olives makes nibbling impulsive, irresistible, inevitable. Best of all might be the little cubes of gingery roasted beet. It’s Roy whom I credit with curing me of a lifelong dislike of beets.
The French and Californian wine list ($32-$89) is relatively spare—an opportunity lost—but it gets the job done. We’re pleased to see that goblet size has recently increased, making it possible to swirl one’s wine without wearing it. My guests and I lead off with a 2005 Domaine de la Solitude, Côtes du Rhone Blanc, France ($29) with an elegant fruit aroma. Our server deposits the open bottle in a metal chiller on the folding stand positioned by our table. This stand can also accommodate our bread basket and carafe of lemon water, leaving more table space to enjoy the many gustatory delights or join fingers across the table with a loved one.
My loved one, who enjoys nothing more than an intimate dinner at Le Petit Café, is marooned on our Philippine island, which is located a couple of hours’ plane ride southeast of Hong Kong, where Roy and Winnie met as commodities and options traders, respectively. Before that, Roy was a professional soccer player, still evidenced by a thick neck, strong hands and ever-alert demeanor. Roy and Winnie are two of the nicest people in the restaurant business, and I enjoy few things more than sharing a glass of wine with Roy after his other customers have departed. None of which, of course, colors my estimation of Le Petit Café. I developed a friendship with Roy because I appreciated his inspired cooking and uncompromising attitude toward quality, not the other way around.
Le Petit Café offers six appetizer choices counting the soup du jour, which is made daily from scratch, often without utilizing any dairy products. On the occasion of our visit, the soup is a chilled red gazpacho, a vibrant version of the classic served over avocado with a hint of spice.
In perhaps the most inspired use of escargots I have ever encountered, Roy sautés nearly a dozen of the delicate little land snails and serves them in a blue-cheese-accented Cognac sauce over a creamy lemon-saffron polenta. The blue cheese isn’t just any blue cheese, but premium Carles Roquefort. The resulting dish is so rich and fabulous that I nibble slowly to prolong my pleasure, taking in the contrasting textures of slippery snail, granular polenta and satiny cheese sauce. I get cravings for this little treat far more frequently than I can afford to assuage them.
It’s not, however, the only dish at Le Petit Cafe that induces cravings at odd hours of the day, set off by who knows what little mnemonic trigger. Roy showcases jumbo shrimp in a spicy sesame vinaigrette atop sesame soba noodles sprinkled with toasted sesame seeds. The crowning shrimp is sliced lengthwise, the two halves cleverly interlocked. The shrimp, served slightly chilled, are so snappily fresh that, if they weren’t headless, they might bite back. Roy has promised this recipe for use on our island, where the primary ingredient surely won’t be difficult to come by.
Roy retains many favorite items on his menu—or else his customers would mutiny. But he usually sneaks in a new item or two every so often. One such item turns out to be a warm duck leg confit, the leg whole rather than disassembled and stunningly flavorful. The confit is accompanied by confiture in the form of Roy’s ginger-apricot jam, as well as golden delicious apple, radish and organic upland cress.
Another favorite that Roy has integrated into his menu in recent years is his fresh Canadian sea scallops, which are lightly poached and served ceviche-style with slices of Cara Cara orange and a fresh pineapple brunoise in a cilantro-jalapeño vinaigrette. The exquisite bivalves, which have had no liquid or chemicals added to them, seem to take to the acidity like, well, scallops to seawater.
As we finish our appetizers, we discover that our supply of wine has been exhausted, slipping away unnoticed during our exclamations of pleasure. We request a 2006 Grayson Cellars Merlot, Paso Robles, California ($45), a nice Cabernet Sauvignon-Merlot blend without too much oak.
The next course is the organic salad du jour. Roy seems to switch back and forth periodically between two salads, sometimes offering nutty baby arugula in an aged sherry vinaigrette with big shavings of superior Parmigiano-Reggiano. But this time the salad features stunningly fresh mesclun greens in a mustard vinaigrette with a disk of warm goat cheese mounted on a cucumber slice.
The starters would seem an impossible act to follow, but Roy is a man who routinely manages the impossible. Six entrées are offered, and I’ve had them all—and probably ten others at one time or another. Since there are only four of us, two dishes won’t get evaluated during this visit. To my surprise, one dish that no one in our party picks is the steak frites, a customer favorite and one of the few items that’s always offered. The steak is an Australian Hereford New York strip served in a brandy-black peppercorn sauce with watercress and French fries. The other dish we don’t manage to try is sesame-crusted Icelandic arctic char served with organic baby shiitake mushrooms, fresh New England corn and a sweet-and-sour mustard sauce. I see the dish going out to other tables and it looks wonderful.
But enough about what we don’t eat, when what we wind up eating turns out to be so great. To the uninitiated, Roy’s pan-roasted Chilean sea bass might appear slightly scorched, but I know better. The dark edging is caused by caramelization of the miso glaze, and it’s absolutely scrumptious. The two-inch-thick slab of fish is served over sautéed snow peas and a roasted garlic confit.
Everyone at our table tastes everyone else’s food, and everyone loves everything. Roasted center-cut pork loin is wrapped in Bayonne ham and served in a ginger-accented Shiraz sauce over a bed of Spanish chorizo and French petit lentils. Roasted rack of Australian lamb is presented as thick, interlocked, blushing pink rib chops in a rosemary-bordelaise sauce over an apple-celeriac gratinée and sautéed sugar snap peas. And last but definitely not least, gorgeous thick slices of all-natural, five-spice-marinated duck breast in an orange sauce are served with haricots verts and an amazing black rice laced with toasted almonds and cherries. That’s a dish I often find myself craving.
To receive the kind of rave notices that Le Petit Café does, all phases of a meal must be perfect, and indeed, there’s no letup with the desserts. There are four of us, but we try five. No sacrifice too great for God or country. Fat blueberries and a little confectioner’s sugar grace the top of a passion fruit crème brûlée, the fruit’s tartness offsetting the dessert’s inherent richness. The flavor of the crème brûlée changes daily.
A wedge of Roy’s flourless chocolate cake is served warm with raspberry sauce and crème Chantilly. I rarely like flourless chocolate cakes, believing that removing the flour from a cake makes little more sense than taking the alcohol out of beer or the caffeine out of coffee. But someone should study Roy’s to see what he does right. One right step is surely the use of exceptional Venezuelan bittersweet chocolate.
I always have a soft spot for Roy’s coconut-and-rum flavored bread pudding, which is baked with raisins and prunes and served warm with caramel sauce, crème anglaise and crème Chantilly. The crispy apple tart is as pretty as it is delicious, a rectangular pastry topped with thin slices of Golden Delicious apple. The dessert du jour is a flourless hazelnut chocolate fondant, an individual cake with a molten interior and a perfect crust.
No matter how great a restaurant’s food is, if the atmosphere and service don’t complement it one’s enjoyment will be severely diminished. Le Petit Café excels on all fronts. Throughout our meal, we are taken care of most capably by a server named Julie. Winnie also checks up on our table. And I’ve noticed Roy leaves his kitchen more frequently than one might expect, observing his guests, keeping a weather eye out for details missed, or even bringing a plate out himself (which adds dramatic impact).
Call me an elitist, but I don’t have tremendous faith in the food opinions of others. However, the Zagat Survey seems to poll enough people so that its opinions are usually in the ballpark. And I can tell you, it’s no accident that Le Petit Café perennially hovers at or near the top of the Zagat Survey ratings. It’s also no accident that a host of restaurant critics have sung the restaurant’s praises. Visit Le Petit Café, if you haven’t, and form your own educated opinion.