So, for a friend's birthday her wish was to have dinner at The French Room which is one of Dallas's most highly-rated restaurants: top of the Zagat ratings, AAA five diamond etc... It's pretty fancy (the men wore suits & ties) and I actually busted out a pair of panty hose (well, only because it was too cold to go bare-legged)! Anyway, it's in the Adolphus Hotel, one of Dallas's oldest hotels, and since it's not very big the wait for a reservation can be pretty long. We thought it would be nice to take Mom there for Mothers Day but the next available reservation isn't until the week AFTER, on May 19th.
But enough about that, how was it? Normally I don't make a judgement about a restaurant until we've been there at least twice. But I think I can safely say that this is a fabulous restaurant without waiting for another visit. They have a prix fixe menu (choose appetizer, entree and dessert) for $80 or the Chef's Tasting Menu (appetizer, two entrees, fruit & cheese course, dessert) for $110 or $165 with wine pairings. We both chose the prix fixe. First we were offered an amuse bouche/small bite of quail egg and beef tartare with a carrot-ginger mousse. Delicious! Next came my appetizer of pork belly with caramelized apple. Wonderful! Then came my entree of dover sole with swiss chard. Fabulous! After a palate-cleanser of apricot sorbet I had my dessert of a blood orange semi-freddo. Amazing!
I was amused to sit down to a place setting that included a knife rest (haven't seen one of those outside an antique store in a long time) and a bread plate with butter knife. As we went through the courses, the cutlery changed and we saw some rare and probably endangered species: demitasse spoons with the sorbet, a fish fork and fish knife for me with my entree, more specialty cutlery for others at the table, far beyond the usual salad fork-dinner fork-steak knife-soup spoon routine. The decor is a little over-the-top French: lots of gold leafing, cherubs painted on the ceiling, etc. but it works. The restaurant was full, but because of the high ceilings it wasn't overly loud and we had no trouble conversing with everyone else at the table.
The service for such a large group (10 of us in total) was very good with the exception of not being offered anything to drink if we didn't want wine. I had to ask three times for bottled water. For this reason only I have to take a little bit off the rating: 4.9 out of 5. I would definitely go back, especially with a smaller group. Maybe we'll take Mom for a late Mothers Day dinner?
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