Cafe Jean Pierre

A few years ago when France was the target of xenophobic sentiment and  some political commentators even advocated boycotting all things French, my vivacious friend Janet Resnik remained a fervent Francophile.  With the simple retort, “ah, but the food,” she found it easy to diffuse dour diatribes in which not a single good thing was said about France.  Not even the most ardent anti-French could argue that French food isn’t among the very best in the world.

In Albuquerque, chef Jean-Pierre Gozard has been more instrumental than anyone in providing fine French alternatives to the ubiquitous chile laden cuisine that seems to define the city.  Chef Gozard started it all in 1975 with the launch of La Crepe Michel, a hugely popular restaurant that’s still going strong nearly four decades later.  In 1979 he opened Le Marmiton, one of the four or five restaurants I’ve missed most from among all those which have closed since we returned to Albuquerque.  From 1987 through 1995, Chef Gozard plied his talents in Casa Vieja, a Corrales landmark.

Cream of Mushroom Soup

After leaving Casa Vieja, it looked for a while as if Albuquerque had seen the last of the über chef, but in 2008 he turned up at  La Crepe Pierre, a highly regarded restaurant which has since evolved into Chez Bob, another excellent French restaurant.  By year’s end, Chef Gozard had launched Cafe Jean-Pierre in the space once occupied by two restaurant instantiations both called The Cup.  Cafe Jean-Pierre is within easy walking distance of the Century 24 theater.  It is clustered amid several local independent and chain restaurants, all of which have seen varying degrees of success.

With all due humility, Chef Gozard will tell you he offers simple dishes at good value and while that may be the case, he prepares them so extraordinarily well that every meal is a sublime experience. In an age of larger-than-life celebrity chefs, he is a breath of fresh air, a modest man who buses tables, greets his guests personally and does whatever it takes to ensure a great meal.

French bread

The high ceiling, exposed ductwork and concrete floors might give the restaurant an uncharacteristically industrial feel if it wasn’t  softened by homey touches.  Faux French windows with shutters, their sills adorned with potted plants, hang high against one wall, giving the appearance of a second story abode.  French movie and art posters festoon the walls.  Linen tablecloth drapes over every table with the appropriate place settings and stemware at the ready.  You’ll know you’re in the presence of French food greatness when you first peruse the menu, or better yet, then its aromas waft toward you.

Rather than being a compendium of every possible French dish possible, the menu focuses on a select–and if our choices are any indication–delicious few. Only two soups grace the menu–soupe a l’oignon gratinee (French onion soup) and a soup du jour. Traditional French onion soup is said to have healing properties, but what it is best at remedying is hunger. Blanketed with melted Gruyere cheese melted to a golden sheen over toasted slabs of French bread and steaming with rich, hearty stock and caramelized onion, it is indeed a fabulous cure-all for mealtime blues–when made well. Chef Gozard’s version is among the very best I have ever had.

House Pate

Ironically, it may not be the best soup on the menu–if the soup du jour is cream of mushroom soup.  If your benchmark for cream of mushroom comes from a red-labeled can, you’ll be amazed at how wonderful the real thing is.   Rich, creamy and steaming hot, it is the essence of French comfort.  It has the flavor of heady wild mushrooms, perhaps portobello and shiitake and (maybe solely in my imagination) a hint of sherry.   With any luck Chef Gozard will someday prepare a soup for an upcoming Souper Bowl, Albuquerque’s premier tasting competition.  It will be even more fortuitous if I’m honored to judge the event again.

You’ll want plenty of the restaurant’s French bread, a lean, airy hard-crusted bread to sop up any remnants of the soup, but also to slather on the real French butter.  French bread is the essence of simplicity–flour, water and yeast– but it is the essence of a French meal. Cafe Jean Pierre procures its bread from the incomparable Fano Bakery, an Albuquerque institution for the staff of life. While many restaurants throughout the Duke City area also offer Fano bread, they tend to slice it envelope thin.  Not so at Cafe Jean Pierre where each slice is wonderfully thick.

Fried Oysters

A quadrumvirate of salads– Nicoise, Endive, Caesar and Maison–are available, and not just for smaller appetites.  These are main course sized salads, plates brimming with garden fresh ingredients plated like fine art.   Appetizers are similarly generous–a smoked salmon plate garnished with capers, red onions, cream cheese and toasts; escargots served the traditional way; La Friture D’Eperlans (smelts, dredged in flour and deep-fried; and the house pate, a housemade pate served with cornichons, moutarde and garnish. 

Yeah, I know what you’re thinking at the mention of pate in a French restaurant–some expensive gourmet duck or goose liver, maybe chopped pork liver.  Cafe Jean-Pierre’s version is a mixture of minced ham, pork, fat and spices.  It’s not easily spreadable, but it cut can be sliced thinly and laid atop toasted bruschetta.  It’s an excellent pate, as good as any we’ve had in Chicago (where some chefs seem to believe you can’t ever have enough garlic on pate).

Fruits de Mer (shrimps, scallops, mushrooms in a cream sauce)

The  BBC calls mustard the “unsung hero of the kitchen cupboard, adding a lick of heat and a depth of flavour to a huge range of dishes.”  That is an apt description for the dollop of grainy yellow mustard served with the pate.  It’s one of several items on the plate providing complementary and contrasting taste sensations that take the pate to another level.  Thinly sliced red onions, tangy capers,  tart pickled cornichons, meaty olives and ripe tomatoes all seem to enhance and enliven the pate.  You can have them on their own or with the pate.  Either way, this is a plateful of deliciousness. 

If you ever happen upon Cafe Jean Pierre on an evening in which fried oysters are a featured appetizer special, don’t dally.  In fact, consider having more than one order.  Only at Jennifer James 101 have we had fried oysters comparable to these pearlescent beauties and JJ’s fried oysters are better than at all but a handful of restaurants we frequented on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.  One of the secrets to great oysters is breading them lightly and frying them to a light, golden sheen.  When you bite into them, you should be able to discern a slight crunch followed by the incomparable, sensuously gooey texture.  The best description of how they should taste I’ve read is, “they taste as if God prepared them.”  These qualities all define the fried oysters at Cafe Jean Pierre.  A half-dozen oysters are served with a rich-tangy tartar sauce, a seared lemon and capons, none of which can improve on perfection.

Jamon Fromage

The menu features six crepes, including a Ratatouille (stewed zucchinis, eggplant, tomatoes, peppers, onions and fine herbs) which should be very popular following the success of the animated movie by that name.  Lunch only items include sandwiches and quiches as well as a lunch portion of Moules Marinieres (fresh steamed mussels served with French fries) and the ever popular Steak Frites (a seven-ounce sirloin charbroiled to order, French fries and garnish).  Crepes are not the name on the marquee, but they’re among many reasons for visiting Cafe Jean-Pierre. 

My love affair with crepes began in 1978 when my dear friend Paul Venne’s mom made them for breakfast one Sunday morning in Pelham, New Hampshire (near the childhood stomping grounds of Bob of the Village of Los Ranchos).  Until then, the most exotic breakfast entree I’d ever had were French toast.  In my review of La Crepe Michel, I share my tale of exasperation, woe, despair and agony in my futile attempts to master the crepe.  I’ve since given up and have decided to leave it to the masters–chefs such as Jean-Pierre Gozard.  The world (and my wrist) is better off for that.

Boeuf en Croute (tenderloin wrapped in puff pastry, mushroom duxelle, Bordelaise)

Seafood aficionados will fall in love with the Fruits de Mer, literally fruits of the sea. This crepe entree has a depth of flavor and richness matched only by the seas in which the seafood bounties–shrimp and scallops– were caught.  Bounty is also a good description for the portion size.  You’ll count five to six sizable scallops, each perfectly prepared and remarkably sweet with none of the “fishy” taste Duke City diners seem destined for when having seafood in our landlocked heaven.    The briny sweetness of the shrimp and scallops is balanced by the earthiness of mushrooms and an ultra-rich sauce. The crepes are perfectly prepared and sheath the seafood so that each forkful includes the light, airy crepe along with either seafood or fleshy fungi all luxuriating neath a rich cream sauce.

Landlubbers will love the Jambon Fromage, a crepe enveloping ham and Gruyere cheese adorned  by a rich, creamy Béchamel.   It’s like having a Croque Monsieur sandwich substituting a crepe for the crustless  sandwich bread.  French ham is perhaps a bit saltier than American ham with little of the American ham’s characteristic (and often overstated) sweetness.  It’s a perfect complement to the sweet and only slightly salty Gruyere.  Crepes are accompanied by a vegetable medley that includes perfectly prepared carrots and zucchini with a sprig of florid rosemary.

Bouillabaisse, the very best in Albuquerque

The sense of smell, more than any of our other senses, influences our ability to recall past events and experience. Fragrance is considered one of the most potent mediums for conjuring up a memory. True enough, one of my most enduring sensory memories is associated with the amazing aromas that greeted me the first time I had Beef Wellington in Chicago.  It’s a memory rekindled instantly as the Boeuf en Croute at Cafe Jean Pierre approached our table.  For all intents and purposes, Beef Wellington and Boeuf En Croute are the same dish, but you’d never get anyone from England and France to agree on that point.  In any event, both feature tenderloin wrapped in puff pastry. From there, creative chefs may indulge themselves with any number of sauces.

Chef Gozard certainly puts the tender in the tenderloin and he wraps it in a puff pastry more reminiscent of the thin crust of freshly baked bread and the cottony light bread just beneath it than it does the puff pastry which disintegrates when penetrated by a fork.  It even looks, tastes and smells like a small, golden hued loaf of bread.  It’s the heady bready aroma which so transported me back to the Windy City.  The tenderloin is prepared in a traditional French manner which means it may appear more raw than rare.  That’s the way it should be for optimum moistness and flavor.  Also sheathed within the puff pastry is a mushroom duxelle, essentially sauteed and finely chopped mushrooms.  The pastry swims in a wondrous Bordelaise sauce.  Julia Child described French sauces as “the splendor and the glory of French cooking.”  That’s a perfect description for Chef Gozard’s Bordelaise sauce, a flavorful accompaniment to the astoundingly wonderful boeuf.

Belle Helene

Having lived both outside of Boston and on the Mississippi Gulf Coast heightened my appreciation of good seafood dishes in our landlocked state where truly outstanding seafood dishes are almost as limited as green chile enhanced entrees are outside New Mexico.  For seafood lovers, few things are as satisfying as a rich, hearty seafood stew, whether it be cioppino or bouillabaisse.  There are more similarities between the Italian-Portuguese cioppino and the French bouillabaisse, both of which have their genesis in the pots and cauldrons of the scions of ancient Mediterranean fishermen.  When the wait staff recites the specials of the day, he or she need not go any further than cioppino or bouillabaisse.  Invariably that’s what I’ll order. 

Cafe Jean Pierre serves the very best bouillabaisse I’ve had in the Land of Enchantment.  “That’s an easy feat,” you might think considering the relative dearth of seafood stews in New Mexico.  Actually, in recent years, both bouillabaisse and cioppino have shown up on the specials menu at several outstanding restaurants throughout the state and all have prepared it very, very well.  Chef Gozard’s rendition transported me back to the piers in San Francisco and Providence with a bouillabaisse so replete with seafood that it seemingly held all the treasures of the sea within a swimming pool sized bowl–shrimp, oysters, cod, mussels, clams and scallops, all perfectly prepared.  At my request, the chef added a bit more heat (courtesy of cayenne) for my order, rendering the broth absolutely perfect for this fire-eater.  The tomato-cayenne rich sauce ameliorated the sweet, succulent seafood, taking nothing away from its native flavor profile.  The oversized (is that even possible) shrimp and scallops, in particular, were perfectly prepared.

Four Cream Crepe (Sour Cream, Cream Cheese, Whipped Cream, Mascarpone)

Les crepes sucrees (dessert crepes) include the de rigueur Crepe Suzette, but for an adventure in taste and contrast, it’s hard to imagine anything better than the Belle Helene, a crepe playing host to poached pears and vanilla ice cream topped with chocolate sauce,  toasted almonds and a housemade whipped cream.  This dessert is the essence of richness, balancing flavor and texture in an island of deliciousness.  The pear is a mellow, slightly tart counterpoint to the sweetness of the chocolate.  The whipped cream is heaped on in plentiful amounts and is as light and frothy as air.  The shaved, roasted almonds are, well, nutty.  This is a dessert to savor slowly and enjoy immensely. 

For sheer richness, however, it may not be possible to beat the four cream crepe, a light, thin crepe enveloping sour cream, cream cheese, whipped cream and Mascarpone.  Unadorned, in fact, it might even be too rich.  To cut into the richness, Chef Gozard tops the crepe with a tart and tangy lemon sauce then sprinkles powdered sugar.  The result is a very well-balanced dessert that awakens your taste buds with explosions of flavor.  If you enjoy the adventure of flavor discernment, you’ll appreciate the challenge of trying to figure out the flavor contributions of each of the four creams.

Janet would have loved Cafe Jean-Pierre, a restaurant reminiscent of the French countryside she loved so much.  She probably would have shared a crepe or two with the anti-French xenophobes.  It’s a good bet they’d be singing the praises of this fabulous crepe, perhaps even of the land of its origin.

Cafe Jean Pierre
4959 Pan American Freeway, N.E.
Albuquerque, New Mexico
(505) 345-3241
Web Site
LATEST VISIT: 15 March 2012
1st VISIT: 7 February 2009
# OF VISITS: 2
RATING: 24
COST: $$$
BEST BET: House Pate, Soupe a l’oignon Gratinee, Cream of Mushroom Soup, Fruits de Mer, Jambon Fromage, Belle Helene, Boeuf en Croute, Bouillabaisse, Four Cream Crepe, Fried Oysters

P'Tit Louis Bistro on Albuquerque's Gold Street

“If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man,
then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you,
for Paris is a moveable feast.”
-Ernest Hemingway

I’ve often wondered if Ernest Hemingway would have felt at home in Taos during the “roaring twenties,” a period of dynamic artistic, societal and lifestyle upheaval.  Instead of communing with the Taos Society of  Artists and other inspired Bohemian minds, Hemingway spent much of the decade in Paris, a city whose own liberal attitudes attracted poets, painters and writers from throughout the world. Paris was a vibrant city which drew many expats from the so-called “lost generation” of cynical young people disillusioned with the materialism and individualism prevalent in society at the time.

Paris was not only a relatively inexpensive city in which to live, unlike America it did not have a prohibition against alcohol.  The American expatriates–F. Scott Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein among them–would gather at cafes to discuss their work and drink until their money ran out.  Much of Hemingway’s most productive writing, in fact, took place in cafes which he visited with his characteristic blue notebooks, pencils and a pocket knife with which to sharpen them.

P'Tit Louis Bistro: Paris in the 1920s

Hemingway was spellbound by the allure and sophistication of Parisian life, so utterly cosmopolitan and unlike the sedate and predictable conservative life of his youth in rural Illinois.  Nightlife included visits to the Champs Elysee where Josephine Baker and a troupe of exotic nude dancers captivated the city.  Long nights of drinking, concerts, dancing and stimulating conversation  defined  Hemingway’s madcap nightlife and that of his cafe society associates.

Aspects of Hemingway’s Paris can be found in Albuquerque’s  P’Tit Louis Bistro which is fashioned like a Paris bistro of the early twentieth century.  If you don’t look out the windows onto Gold or Third Streets, you might actually feel as if you’ve been transported to Paris of a bygone era, the era of Ernest Hemingway and the lost generation.  P’Tit Louis is a special place frequented not by a lost generation, but by guests who don’t look as though they patronize the chains embraced by conventional society.  It’s a place in which intellectual discourse can be overheard among diners who have likely traveled abroad and read Moveable Feast.

Moules Roquefort with Pommes Frites

The painstakingly thorough attention taken by co-owners Christoph Decarpentiers and John Phinzyto re-create the art deco ambiance of a turn-of-the-century Parisian bistro left no detail untouched.  Tiny black-and-white hexagonal tiles and an imprinted tin ceiling both bespeak of period authenticity and precise craftsmanship which is also apparent in the  artisan construction of the hand-crafted art nouveau bar and other decorous touches.

The interior is cramped and cozy with fewer than a dozen tiny tables in personal space proximity to one another.  The tables are obviously intended for dishes to be delivered in sequence, not for several dishes to be delivered at one time.  The cynosure of the bistro is a massive tri-mirrored banquette flanked on one side by  vintage Victorian-style framed photographs and a poster reproduction of Henri Toulouse-Lautrec’s “Moulin Rouge–La Gouue” on the other.  A soundtrack featuring the soothing stylings of Edith Piaf and other French singers of decades past lend to a dining experience in which time seems to have stopped nearly a century ago.

Escargots de Bourgogne: 1⁄2 dozen escargots in garlic butter

The Bistro is open Monday through Saturday from 10:30AM to 5:30PM and as mentioned previously, seating is limited so reservations are definitely recommended.  If you’ve ever been to an old French cafe in Paris, deja vu will set in the moment you step into the cozy setting.  You may even be inspired to your own creativity.

The menu may inspire lascivious salivation.  As in many French bistros, two menus are delivered to your table (if you’re thinking one is a wine menu, you’d be wrong).  A small paper menu lists a nice selection of cheeses for the fromage fanatics among us. Proper etiquette is to enjoy cheeses after your main course and before or as a substitute for dessert.  Cheeses are intended for nibbling as you enjoy conversation with your dining companions, hence it’s a digestive aide of sorts.  Certainly your conversation will include a discourse of appreciation for the cheeses themselves, an international array from France, Italy, Spain, Greece, Denmark, England and the United States.  The last cheese listed is a soft green chile Cheddar made in Tucumcari.

French bread with the unique implements you

The larger laminated menu showcases traditional French bistro fare.  Compared to the compendium-sized menus at some restaurants, P’Tit Louis’s menu is petite–fittingly in consideration of the tiny tables. The Les Salades section of the menu lists six salads, the type of which might grace a table in Provence.  The “assiettes” (small entrees and hors’d-oeuvres” designed to fit precisely on a plate) section of the menu lists six items, including your choice of trois (three) cinq (five) or sept (all seven) cheeses.

Les Moules (mussels) are a specialty of the house with three versions featured daily along with a daily mussels creation.   Once considered food for the poor, mussels have become earned reverential respect in the hands of French chefs.  At the Bistro moules du jour include Moules Marinieres (steamed with white wine and shallots), Moules Roquefort (steamed with Roquefort sauce) and Moules Piquantes (white wine, chili peppers, jalapeño).  The Les Sandwiches section of the menu lists five sandwiches including a Le Croque Monsieur (French ham, gruyere and bechamel) Local IQ’s Kevin Hopper considers life altering.  Only two items grace the Plats Du Jour menu: Le Ragout du jour (our daily stew) and La Quiche du jour (quiche of the day).  The limited (four items) Les Desserts menu is only slightly smaller than the Les Vins (wines) menu which showcases seven red and white wines.

Coq Au Vin with Aligot (French mashed potatoes)

As you contemplate the menu, one of the nattily attired wait staff will ferry over to your table a large basket of French bread, a slice of which is deposited on your bread plate.   It will be the first of several slices you’ll either slather on the unctuous French butter or will use to dredge up some of the incredible sauces you’ll enjoy.  With a hard-crusted exterior and a not quite pillowy soft interior, it’s a delicious bread.

Call it a perfect bread for dredging up the broth in which the Moules Curry (a special of the day) is served.  The curry is a perfect foil for the delicate, slightly briny flavor of the succulent shellfish.  The curry broth, saffron in color and mild in flavor, is ameliorated with minced garlic.  It would make an excellent soup on its own.  Perhaps even better than the moules curry is the moules Roquefort, a dish so outstanding that the venturous diner about town Jim Millington orders it every time he visits.  It’s easy to see why. This traditional coalescence of land and sea flavors showcases the pungent blue cheese flavor of the “king of cheeses,” rendered just slightly less sharp with fresh cream and a mill of pepper.  If you’ve never had a palatable cheese soup, you’ve never had the moules Roquefort broth tinged with the briny deliciousness of fresh mussels.  It’ll hook you. 

Betteraves & Chevre: Roasted beets and goat cheese salad, sherry vinaigrette

Fittingly, the third in the du jour triumvirate of moules dishes offered by P’Tit Louis was listed as one of the top ten restaurant dishes for 2011 by Local Flavor Magazine writer Christie Chisholm who waxed rhapsodic about her love of the Moules Piquantes.  Admitting that P’tit Louis is her favorite restaurant in Albuquerque, the poetic Ms. Chisholm praised the “twist that will win the heat-seeking hearts of many New Mexicans: chile peppers and jalapeños.”   Sounds great to me.  The Local Flavor’s celebration of Albuquerque’s top ten dishes for 2011, by the way, inspired several contributors to this blog to submit their own top ten lists: Bruce Schor, Sr. Plata, Bob of the Village of Los Ranchos, Larry McGoldrick, Suzie Queue, Jim Millington, Dan and Gil Garduño.

On Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, the Bistro offers fresh oysters on the half-shell if you’re inclined to luxuriate further in hard-shelled seafood.  If you’re more inclined toward hard-shelled land delicacies, you’ll love P’Tit Louis’ escargots de Bourgogne, a half-dozen escargots in garlic butter.  Unlike so many escargots, these are not extricated from their shells and deposited in small cups filled mostly with bread crumbs and minced garlic.  You’ll have to work for these delicious beauties.  Fortunately you’re given the implements with which to accomplish this deft feat–a full-sized fork in which the exterior tongs have been bent back and a tool that looks like a surgical implement, but is used to hold the escargots while you extract the buttery, garlicky delicacies.  It’s worth the effort and more.

Bone-in pork chop topped with a sauce of cornichons, spicy tomatoes and more

During our inaugural visit, we lucked upon the ragout du jour being Coq Au Vin, the classic French stew whose origin (claimants to its invention include Julius Caesar’s chef) is in delicious dispute.   Featuring a single chicken leg cooked in red wine with onions, carrots and celery atop a generous mound of mashed potatoes, this is a version perhaps improvable only with pearl onions instead of sliced onions.  Otherwise, this is a very enjoyable dish.  The chicken falls off the bone into a wine blessed broth that’s perfect for sopping up with that terrific bread.  The wine broth also serves as an excellent “gravy” for the mashed potatoes, made with real potatoes. 

The tasty temptress offered during our second visit was a bone-in pork chop topped with a sumptuous sauce showcasing spicy tomatoes and cornichons, essentially two acidic flavors which coexist beautifully together against a backdrop of America’s other white meat.  The pork chop, a half-inch of tender porcine perfection plays the foil against the crunchy tartness of the cornichons and especially the sharpness of the mound of chopped, spicy tomatoes.  It’s an interesting sauce, not one I could find among the 103 basic French sauces, but one now on my radar. 

L’ Assiette de Charcutaille: cold cuts & country paté

It wasn’t so much the haute cuisine of France’s grand, elegant restaurants which won my heart during frequent visits to France in the 1990s, but the more simple family fare–bread, cheeses and meats.  In France, as in much of Europe, the ancient culinary art of charcuterie is still highly revered and well-practiced.  Charcuterie refers to the products made and sold in a delicatessen-style shop, also called a charcuterie.  The operative word here is “made” as in butchering, cutting, salting, curing, slicing, storing and preparing such meat products such as bacon, sausage, ham, pates, and more.   As Bon Apetit Magazine has discovered, the charcuterie practice is alive and well in America, too. 

In the spirit of the Charcuterie, P’tit Louis offers L’Assiette de Charcutaille, a beautiful plating of cornichons, country pate, rosemary-encrusted ham, sopressata, garlic sausage and Spanish chorizo served with as much bread as you desire if you want to construct a sandwich or four.  As good as the bread is, my preference is to enjoy each meat unadorned, using a cornichon as a palate-cleanser.  The cornichons are delightful little French baby “pickles,” with a zesty, tangy snap.  Each of the meats offered is deliciously different from the other, offering a nice balance of salty, spicy, sweet and piquant flavors.

Creme de Caramel

Landlocked Albuquerque, stereotyped as being too far from the verdant paradises which produce sheer freshness in their fecund fields, has a surprising number of restaurants showcasing salads constructed of high-quality, fresh ingredients.  Add P’Tit Louis to the list if the Betteraves & Chevre (roasted beet and goat cheese) salad is any indication.  A very understated sherry vinaigrette means the ingredients have to shine and shine they do.  The greens are crisp and firm with a just-picked freshness.  The roasted beets are sweet with just a hint of tanginess and the roasting lends a depth of flavor, particularly in accentuating the beets’ natural sweetness.  The goat cheese is as soft as cream cheese and is impregnated with a sweet, mild pungency.  it’s a delicious chevre.

When my sweet-toothed Kim joined me in England in 1985, it surprised her to learn that French gateaus and desserts weren’t nearly as cloying as cakes and desserts in America.  It’s something I liked from the start, but it took her time to get used to desserts that weren’t tooth-decaying sweet.  The Bistro’s desserts remind me very much of the desserts in France, an  expression of natural flavors, not sugared ameliorants.  The Creme de Caramel reminded me of a Mexican flan, but far less sweet. Better even is the chocolate pot de creme, a ramekin of semi-sweet adult chocolate.  It’s the antithesis of the American version which tastes more like chocolate frosting.

Chocolait Pot de Creme

In the spirit of fairness and balance (please, no comments about Fox News), there is one item on the menu which not only didn’t win me over, but left me flummoxed.  Found faulty was the tarte aux citron, a lemon tart with nary the zest and tartness of lemon.  The only lip-pursing effect it had was in leaving our bottom lips downturned with disappointment.  In addition to lacking any hint of tartness, it had the texture of a corn-starchy out-of-the-box mix.  Jim Millington, who suggested a rating of  “32″ would be appropriate will hopefully forgive my assessment of “24″ which still places this charming restaurant among the elite in New Mexico.

Ernest Hemingway would have liked hanging out at P’Tit Louis Bistro with his literary colleagues.  You’ll like being transported to Hemingway’s time for a very good meal in a sophisticated bistro worthy of many visits.  In the late summer of 2011, a second instantiation of this P’tit Louis Bistro launched in the Nob Hill area (3218 Silver Avenue, SE).  It has made it somewhat easier to get a seat at the original, but reservations are always the safest bet.

P’Tit Louis Bistro
228 Gold Avenue, S.W.
Albuquerque, New Mexico
(505) 314-1111
Web Site
LATEST VISIT: 17 December 2011
1st VISIT:  30 April 2011
# OF VISITS: 2
RATING: 24
COST: $$ – $$$
BEST BET: Les Moules with Curry, Les Moules Roquefort, Escargots de Bourgogne, Coq Au Vin with Aligot, Betteraves & Chevre, L’ Assiette de Charcutaille, Chocolait Pot de Creme, Creme de Caramel