Lunch Review: Encore Bistro Français

by Paula Eisenberg

(August 14, 2002) Encore Bistro, on Chatsworth Avenue across from the Post Office, might be considered the vanguard of the ambitious new restaurants opening in the Village in the last couple of years. The cozy, casual dining room is usually packed with a cosmopolitan crowd at dinnertime, and you hear as much French as English at the tables nearby. Just as the presence of Japanese diners in a sushi restaurant usually signals "This place has good fish," hearing so much French in a local eatery leads one to expect authenticity. Encore looks and feels authentic, and the food sometimes transports the diner back to that fondly remembered little boîte tucked away on a Left Bank sidestreet.

Notice the word "sometimes." The food at Encore can be uneven, increasingly so over the last six months. Perhaps the owners, who are originally from France and own another restaurant in Wilton, CT, are distracted. Perhaps they're having trouble keeping prices reasonable while still using top-quality ingredients. Over two lunches in the past couple of weeks, my companions and I have sampled some good and some mediocre dishes at Encore. In the first year since the restaurant opened in March, 2000, the food at lunch and dinner was better, consistently.

Good starters one day recently were the French onion soup, with its rich beef broth, silky cheese and sweet caramelized onions. Also fine, always, is the salade de chêvre chaud, warm nuggets of goat cheese on toasted baguette pieces, each creamy chunk edged in a different piquant or peppery coating, served over fresh-tasting mesclun greens. Steamed mussels, while fresh, suffered from a bland broth. Cold watercress soup, a special, tasted medicinal and bitter, even slightly rancid.

I wish restaurants wouldn't serve fresh tomatoes until they are in-season locally, rather than offer up pallid, tasteless slices of pseudo-tomato like the ones in Encore's tomato and mozzarella salad.

Much better were the main courses. Tournedos de porc sauté, sauce moutarde à l'ancienne is simply a hefty piece of boneless pork loin, served with an excellent, tart and creamy whole grain mustard sauce. The meat is plated with just-right portions of peas, roasted tomato and a timbale of couscous. The pork, while tasty, was a bit overcooked and dry, but the simple, elegant sauce saved it.

Poached salmon in an aioli sauce was perfectly done, pink and fragrant. Mushroom and spinach raviolis in a mushroom sauce pleased with the delicate filling and al dente pasta.

Reasonably priced wines by the glass make for a relaxed lunch, and the iced tea is good and freshly brewed.

Pêche melba, peach halves served over vanilla ice cream and topped with a dollop of whipped cream, disappointed. The peaches had a distinctly canned texture, inexplicable when fresh peaches are available, and unforgivable anytime. Better were the warm crèpes filled with a fruit compote, dusted with powdered sugar and graced with a pretty and delicious raspberry coulis. The excellent profiterolles, usually the most popular dessert at dinner, are a delectable marriage of vanilla ice cream, puff pastry and rich chocolate sauce.

The young, attractive wait-staff are well-trained, professional and friendly, without exhibiting any cloying "I'm Traci and I'll be your server tonight" behavior.

We'd like to see Encore return to its former level of quality. Larchmont people, well-traveled and sophisticated about food, embraced this little taste of France when it opened, thrilled to find high-quality, authentic bistro food served in such a convivial atmosphere. Let's hope the restaurant's third year will show it maturing, not declining.