Josh has been traveling a lot for work recently so my meals lately have consisted mainly of leftovers from our weekends of gorging, easily prepared foods such as sandwiches and salads, or pre-made soups and frozen pizzas. Sad, yes, but a lot of my joy from cooking and eating comes from sharing the experience with someone. If I made what I thought was the most fantastic meal ever and no one else was there to taste it, would it still be the most fantastic meal ever? It’s kind of like hitting a hole in one with no witnesses. It’s still a great feat but no one can fully share in your excitement.
Ok maybe I’m just making excuses for being lazy. Regardless, one mid-week night while Josh was away, I was thrilled for the opportunity to have a girls’ night dinner with Josh’s mom and his cousin. We met up on the Upper East Side at Jess’ apartment and went off in search for food. None of us are all that familiar with restaurants in the area still so we basically chose a place based on where we could find street parking. We ended up at Jacques Brasserie, a lovely restaurant with a menu that offers all of the standard French bistro classics.
We started off with some delicious slices of baguettes with salty butter. The bread had a decent crust, nice chew, and good flavor. My only complaint was that they had a bread man doling out one slice at a time, and he couldn’t come around fast enough. We were starving and couldn’t get enough of the bread!
Yummy baguette
For our appetizers, both Josh’s mom Alice and I opted for the soupe a l’oignon, classic French onion soup. The broth was deep and rich and full of onion flavor, and there was plenty of cheese melted on top. However, the soup wasn’t quite as hot as it needed to be, and all that cheese quickly congealed into one big lump. I ended up trying to break pieces off with the spoon and using my fingers, so it got to be quite messy, but it was a delicious soup nonetheless.
French onion soup covered in a thick gooey layer of gruyere
Jess ordered the salade de bettrave, which was beet salad with chopped endives and manchego. She asked the waiter if they would substitute goat cheese for the manchego, and he easily acquiesced. The resulting salad was a mix of complementary flavors, textures and colors, with the sweetness of the soft red roasted beets, the tanginess and creaminess of the white goat cheese, and the bitter crunchiness of the yellow endive leaves. We all ended up stealing bites from Jess’ plate and loved every bit of it.
For my main course, I chose the steak frites, which came with a choice of béarnaise sauce or au poivre sauce. I selected au poivre and was disappointed with the watery and greasy sauce that I received in a ramekin with my steak and fries. The sauce had no discernable peppercorn flavor to it. Fortunately the steak was fabulous, a thick and meaty piece that was cooked rare per my request. It was actually almost black and blue, with a dark, flavorful crust on the outside and still pink and bleeding in the middle. Just how I like it! The steak had a good amount of flavor and just needed an additional sprinkling of salt to boost it up.
Perfectly cooked steak with a nicely formed outer crust, but disappointing au poivre sauce on the side
The fries were freshly cut and nicely fried so that they were hot and crispy on the outside and soft and potato-y on the inside. It came in a separate cone that I didn’t mind sharing with everyone else.
Freshly cut and fried french fries
Jess had the coquilles St. Jacques, which were seared sea scallops on top of wild mushroom risotto with manchego and cranberry reduction. Neither she nor I have ever tried coquilles St. Jacques before, but Alice said they were not what she knows of as coquilles St. Jacques. The scallops were cooked well but the risotto was slightly gummy, and the manchego appeared to have been melted on top of the risotto, which was kind of weird. Jess ended up scraping that off to the side and focused mainly on eating the scallops.
For her entrée, Alice had the poulet roti, which was roasted chicken with garlic mashed potatoes and sautéed spinach. The chicken was cooked perfectly and had surprisingly crispy skin. The mashed potatoes were nicely garlicky and the spinach wasn’t bitter. It was a simple dish but very well prepared.
Of course with this being a girls’ night, we couldn’t pass up on dessert. First up was an apple tart that had a nice thin layer of apple filling and creamy vanilla ice cream, but the crust was an absolute disaster. It appeared to be made of a piece of flattened puff pastry, so that the layers of the pastry dough were stuck together in a tough and unwieldy way. We couldn’t cut through the crust with the side of our forks, and even when we busted out a knife it was still extremely hard to get through. After a few attempts that ended up rattling the plate and the table, we sadly had to give up on most of the tart.
Beautiful apple tart but with a terrible, hard-to-eat crust
Our second dessert, the crème brulee, had an evenly browned crackly sugar crust on top but the custard itself wasn’t properly cooled before it was served and as a result it was too warm and liquid-y. Even though it had a nice vanilla flavor, the dessert lost all the silkiness and lusciousness of a properly prepared crème brulee.
Creme brulee with an evenly browned sugary crust but a too warm and liquidy interior
For the most part, we enjoyed our girls’ night meal at Jacques Brasserie. The meal got off to a good start with delicious French baguettes and continued from there. Although desserts weren’t quite up to par, pretty much everything else we had was tasty and well prepared. Service was fine, and the restaurant has a laid back atmosphere that allowed us to have nice conversation. It is a bit on the pricey side though, so it’s not somewhere we would go very often. It looks like the brunch menu is pretty reasonable though, which I might have to check out next time. But overall it was good company and good food – what more can you ask for?
Jacques Brasserie
204 East 85th St. between 2nd and 3rd Ave.
New York, NY