Lunch at Bandol

[tighe]

Most of you probably saw this on 'Farewell & Welcome' thread, but the owner of Cassis is opening a new place this month in the lobby of the Smith Tower called Bandol. The menu is the kind of classic French food that frankly makes me weak in the knees and its interesting that they're focusing on lunch and take-out food.

I would like to go there ASAP and am proposing Friday, October 24 if anyone else is interested. I will be there one way or the other. It looks like we can make reservations and if there's 6 or more, we may be able to use their private dining room.

So far its mamster and me....

Edited October 3, 2003 by tighe (log)

[malarkey]

I'll go. I'm with you on the classic French food fetish.

[malarkey]

oh whaaa! its only open for lunch! well... let me see. I think I can still do this. Their menu sounds great...

[mamster]

FYI, I have class at 12:30 on Friday (and I can't skip, because it's quiz day), so I can do either 11am or 2pm for lunch. Luckily, Bandol is right next to the bus tunnel.

My class is actually food-related: I'm taking Thai language so that next time I go to Thailand I can ask cooks how they make stuff.

[tighe]

Between early and late, I would vote for early, but could probably make either one work...

[Schielke]

Blast you and your Downtown Seattle lunch-time ways!!!!!!

[MsRamsey]

(In homage to tighe)

I'd love to come along, but I'll be having dinner at Trio in Chicago then.

[tighe]

(In homage to tighe)

I'd love to come along, but I'll be having dinner at Trio in Chicago then. 

Feel better now??

Don't choke on any of those 25 amuses.....

[mamster]

So, 11am on Friday?

I absolutely, positively have to be out of there by 11:50 to make it to class, which I doubt will be a problem unless they make the duck confit to order.

[tighe]

Scrat and I are in....

[SparrowsFall]

I'm almost certainly in. I've got a 10:00 in the U district, but it should only last 20 minutes...

What Tighe said about "weak in the knees."

Steve

[tsquare]

Stepped inside today.

The cold case held some mixed green salads, quiche, pate sandwiches, and pork rilette (sp?) sandwiches. With the choice of pork or pork, I went on to Salumi. The overall menu looked tasty - Friday special is petit cassoulet. Tomorrow, they are supposed to start having desserts. Oh, it was around 1:30, and very quiet.

Bon Appetit!

[mamster]

Bandol is a nice place. There was some construction noise (the sign was being put up) and the place was pretty empty, but we were quite early. tighe, scrat, and I shared a goat cheese appetizer, where the cheese was warmed in some kind of leaf (I totally forget what kind) and served with a warm beet and julienned leek salad and some little dots of pear conserve. It was good, although the unwrapping of the cheese felt a bit hunter-gatherer.

I had calf's liver with red onion marmalade and pommes frites. Frites were good, liver was sliced thin but not cooked to death.

The bread needs a little work. I'm not sure where it's from, but there were two different ficelle-shaped loaves, both of which had poor crust development and not a lot of flavor. Good butter, though.

There are a million things on the menu I want to go back for, so stay tuned.

[tighe]

I enjoyed the lunch today very much too. I had the tarte de jour, in this case ox tail and musroom. Pretty much like a thin quiche, not as boldly flavored as I might have hoped. Scrat had a croque monsieur, her bellweather of the quality of a French bistro at lunch.

Unfortunately mamster had to eat and run, but scrat and I "happened" to run into the manager and got a tour of the restuarant. She pointed out numerous original Smith Tower architectural artifacts that had been salvaged and incorporated in to the decor. If you go, look for the metal grill work displayed in different parts of the bar, a large mahagony mirror at the back of the restaurant and the metal stall doors in the ladies room painted to look like wood. They also have a nice sized private dining room.

Edited October 24, 2003 by tighe (log)

[mamster]

Ooh, yes, the private dining room. I saw it at the opening party last week, and it looks grand. Party!

[LaurieA-B]

Lunch at Bandol=superdud.

Since Matthew and I both had the day off today, we had big plans to treat ourselves to lunch before a visit to the obstetrician. Our original thought was the 25/25 menu at the Georgian Room, which sounded delicious. We didn't think much about making a reservation for lunchtime; I called this morning to check if we needed a reservation, and it turned out they were full today. So I immediately cried, "Bandol!" Judy just ate there with a friend last week and said it was fabulous. I'd been drooling over the menu for weeks, so this seemed like the perfect opportunity.

We ordered the brandade de morue to share, then the croque monsieur for me and baked eggs for Matthew. We looked forward to dessert (we had sampled a couple at the opening party that were delicious). At that point the only off note was the bread: very, very pale-crusted baguette. I whispered to Matthew that it looked like it had been parbaked but not baked again. It was totally tasteless. The brandade was served with crostini that was also very pale (I commented, "If Jason Perlow were here he would send it back for more toasting"), but crunchy, with a slightly darker crust than the baguette. The brandade was nicely textured and tasty; Matthew thought it was a bit heavy on the rosemary.

When the main courses arrived, I was surprised by the soft, sloppy appearance of my sandwich. I took a couple of bites and found it very wet and soggy. Responding to Matthew's query about my food, I said, "I thought it would be crisp." As served, it was non-tasty. The beautiful baked eggs dish turned out to include, unfortunately, undercooked white beans. So we both sent our dishes back. It was the first time in my life I have ever found a dish so poor that I sent it back. Thus Bandol will forever occupy a notorious place in my memory (along with Barcelona, the only movie I ever walked out of in a theater, because I was bored). The server returned the menus to us. I felt like leaving, because it was difficult to choose something else off the menu after being served bad food, but we still needed to eat lunch and leaving wasn't the best option. When Matthew chose the duck salad, I decided to get the plain wild greens and an order of frites to share. We got the frites with bacon, an enormous heap as they serve at Cassis, and they were quite delicious. The salad was fine. By this time we were out of time, and had to leave without ordering dessert. The people next to us had the caramel cashew chocolate tart and it looked really good.

So, if this was my only experience with Bandol, I would think it pretty much failed. But considering other visits, perhaps it was just an off day for those dishes? The people around us were enjoying their food. But I was very disappointed. (Both offending dishes were, of course, removed from the bill.)

[tighe]

C'mon Laurie, there was nothing wrong with your lunch at Bandol, you just wanted a chance to rip off the "super-dud" line...

Sorry to hear it didn't go well. I'd encourage you to give it another chance at some point....

[ScorchedPalate]

Looks like Bandol is now searving dinner as well, according to the last 'graf of Penelope's article on January 9.

[little ms foodie]

A friend and I had dinner last night at Bandol. We arrived at 6:15 for 6:30 reservations and the place was really quiet. They have a happy hour from 3-6pm with food and drink specials.There was a group of after workers in the bar and 1 table of diners. We sat at the bar and had a kir and talked to the bartender Sky who was very nice.

Decided to eat at a table in the bar so we could continue to have Sky wait on us. They don't allow smoking in there until 9pm. 2 types of bread, one like a foccacia but not crisp on top, the other was likened to a baguette but again too soft. We asked about the breads and they don't make them inhouse but he wasn't sure where they got them. I suggested they get to know Macrina ;)

Shared the braised duck crepe which was served with fresh peas and greens and a rosemary oil. YUM!! We really wanted an order of pate but the one was headcheese which wasn't doing much for me and the other wasn't set yet.

My friend had the quail with lentils and roasted fennel while I had the Wed. special- rabbit in mustard sauce. Both were excellent. Tender and flavorful meat with wonderful sauces. We shared a plate of frites with bacon- this is truely lardon so if you don't like the fat stuff stay away. The fries were good, not as salty and crispy as the ones at Cassis but still very good. Also shared a bottle of Bandol for namesake. The wine list is good. They have choices by the glass, pichet or bottle and are very reasonably priced.

For dessert we each had a glass of Sauternes on the house because of not getting the pate we wanted we were told. Very nice. We also shared the plate of 3 cheeses but since neither of us do Blue ( I know, I know...) we had them double up on the sheeps from the Pyranees and then there was a really nice goat.

Great atmosphere, really nice service. dinner for 2 with wine and tax was $112. Will go back for more and am looking forward to working in the area again and having lunch there too.

[girl chow]

Thanks for the review -- that just bumped them up my list a little higher. Yum.

[tighe]

I had dinner at Bandol and couple weeks ago, and like lmf, was very pleased. I started with the same braised duck crepe. Very moist and excellent texture, I just thought it could have used more seasoning to bring out the duck flavor. My entree was lobster in a Madeira broth. Perfectly cooked but I would have liked there to be a little more of it. Guess small portions of lobster shouldn't be surprising. The best dish of the night was scrat's seard lamb loin with mint-basil pesto sauce. Outstanding. Unbelievably, I skipped dessert (there was no seriously chocolate dessert). Scrat had some coconut milk ice cream with chocolate sauce. The sauce was brougth out in its own gravy boat and had nice pure chocolate flavor.

With dinner we had a red wine from the Loire which I found pretty uninteresting. One of the Bandols or other wines from southern France would probably be a better choice.

Edited May 27, 2004 by tighe (log)

[LaurieA-B]

Pulling the discussion over from "Farewell and Welcome"--yes, I had one disappointing meal at Bandol, but certainly had not written off the restaurant based on that one experience. The posts here from tighe and ms foodie had me thinking positively--only to hear they're closing down. While that's definitely too bad, especially since that's a great location for a good restaurant, it's terrible that Cassis got sucked into ruin too.