Mille Fleurs

We had company come down from the bay area yesterday and decided to all go out for a nice meal. Our guests were Melissa, our favorite chef, who cooks privately for a lot of very interesting clients up north and her boyfriend, my buddy Gary.

This is the first week of San Diego's Restaurant Week. Restaurant week is the biannual event when a couple hundred of the finest eateries in the area serve meals at extra reasonable prices, with prix fixe dinners at $20 to $40 bucks a head. This gives us folks from the provinces the opportunity to break bread with the tony elite.

Of course, this can sometimes lead to problems. Long time blog readers might remember two years ago when the haughty restauranteur told me that he was dropping the whole deal, because he wasn't going to cater to a bunch of "Joe Sixpacks" twice a year. This of course was after our table ponied up over seven hundred dollars for the privilege of having the more favored guests blow cigar smoke at our table all night. Earlier in the year we had a fabulous meal at Pampelmousse, free from issues and full of gustatory pleasure.

We were lucky enough to get reservations at Mille Fleurs, thought by many of the food loving people I know to be the best restaurant in the whole county. I hadn't been for about fifteen years, and that was a lunch, so I wanted to see if the place indeed lived up to billing.

We met our friends in the beautifully Lillian Rice designed village of Rancho Santa Fe. A covenant laden with eucalyptus planted in the 19th century for railroad ties until somebody figured out that they had a habit of splitting and were unusable. Twenties era spanish revival architecture at its most perfect apogee. It is no wonder so many of the wealthy elite choose to live there. We entered the courtyard and I made my way to the maitre d's station where we were met by the lovely Melissa, the woman I had talked to on the telephone who kept assuring me that there would be no problem with any of my requests. I wanted to make sure that the restaurant week clientele wouldn't be eating from some dressed down menu in the basement with the rest of the serfs. She assured me that that was never the case at Mille Fleurs.

Mille Fleurs is a really lovely and ambient establishment. Very nicely appointed but relaxed. The first thing I was aware of was the large amount of wait staff, like French Laundry but not pompous or pretentious. Handsome french men, at least according to our significant others, I saw one female server. Melissa spends a lot of time in France and wondered how they found so many fun and friendly frenchmen, seemingly with no attitude whatsoever.

We started off with water and then drinks. Vodka all around and throw in an Amstel Light for Gary. The menus were a bit big and cumbersome and one of my companions accidentally jettisoned her drink after knocking into it. They came over and told her not to worry. They brought back half a cocktail which was kind of strange. I think that we would have paid for a full one but I guess that we were dealing with gallic sensibilities here and so she paid a small penalty for her clumsiness.

We had a basket of good bread, then ordered a fois gras appetizer for the table, accompanied by delicious figs. Gary ordered the yellowfin tartare with caviar and creme fraiche. Mini twinkie mounds of tuna, very nice effort. Melissa and I had absolutely superb corn soup with a red bell pepper decoration. It was so rich and the Chino Farms corn was flavorful, intense and powerful. Leslie had the lobster, shrimp and sea scallop boudin, which she adored. I looked around for my buddy Jim's favorite dish at Mille Fleurs, the shadroe cases but didn't see them. The fois gras was good but in my opinion not up to the gold standard for fois gras in the area that is served at Vincents.

Somewhere along the line we ordered a glass of pouilly fuissé and then the bottle. The girls liked it, I wasn't crazy about it. Outvoted on the sancerre.

We received our entrees after a minor wait. Melissa had the freshwater whitefish meuniére which she thought tasted more like sole. Gary had the weinerschnitzel, which was topped with sliced caper berries and a quail egg. Leslie had the three style mixed grill with a slider(?) and I tried the duck breast with huckleberries, with purple potatoes and broccoli.

We all shared each other's dishes of course, as is our habit and my feeling is that the dinner was very good but certainly never approached sublime or great. The schnitzel tasted a bit dry and unadorned to me, mixed grill good but not inspiring, whitefish lacking something. To be fair my dinner companions all loved their entrees, so I am only speaking for myself. My dish was tasty but was a touch under sauced and just didn't meld completely. The huckleberries are a great compliment to the duck. The potatoes were alpo shaped cubes that were both tasteless and unappealing and the two small limp pieces of broccoli accompanying the dish were also quite lacking. But as I said, my companions were happy and said that they were all pleased with the meal. Guess you can't please everybody.

Dessert was crepe suzette and chocolate mousse cake that tried but maybe not hard enough. We got our bill and with all the extras ended up paying about $400.00 including tip. Which now that I look at the website might have been too much, since the website says that a 20% gratuity was already figured in. I swear I never saw a tip added in. Oh well.

I queried my wife about the meal on the drive home. She said 7 or 8 out of 10. I concur. It missed that magic hidden something that elevates the great to the extraordinary. I want to go back and try it on a normal night. They were awfully busy. The staff was charming and professional. Restaurant week is tough. Hard to maintain consistency and your food standards with the great influx of the unwashed like me at your door. While the food was maybe not sublime, the atmosphere was wonderful and it is still a great eating experience. Looking forward to giving it another try.