Zut, alors!!! Bistrot Margot - N'ville

Finally made it to this place, which has parlayed a complete lack of any publicity or marketing into great word of mouth, and good business. But it was 3/4 empty for a Friday lunch, so business is not that great.

What comes after will sound snotty, even snooty, because it is. No apologies here.

Let me start by admitting my bias: Bistro food is bar food, French bar food, sure, but it is not fancy in any way. Perhaps comfort food is a better term, if one imagines that a savory veal roast with pommes dauphine is the French equivalent of meat loaf and mashed potatos. In the US, somehow Bistro fare ends up being, or at least trying to be haute in a way that it really is not. This ends up bugging me, both because one ends up paying prices that are out of line with the quality and complexity of the food, and then they start mixing things up and really trying to add haute cuisine in the middle of the bistro, which does not exactly work (Brasserie Jo has always been a particularly frustrating version of this, where I find the Brasserie standbys, and the fancier touches all to be profoundly mediocre - if he just focused on making really good choucroute, please!). Give me a really well done salade frisee, steak frites, roti du jour, something au gratin, haricots verts, etc, and I am happy.

The other bias is against Bistro Margot - the one time I visited it in the city I found the food mediocre, and the din annoying. Le Sardine, by contrast, does seem to get it.

But the arrival of proven, quality places in N'ville, and particularly a decent Bistro following on the arrival of Hugo's Frog Bar, seem something to be encouraged. So today I took a group from work to lunch there.

The meal was not bad, just comical. Our waiter was an earnest young fellow without any pretensions - charming, if basically clueless. There seems to be this problem with waitpeople in the suburbs. I rather think that it comes from most of them never having dined in the quality of place they are now working in, so they really do not understand the food, the ambience, or even the concept. Depending on the person, the result can be comical, charming, annoying or even rude. Sometime, and this was the case here, they seem to be acting like they are acting in a high school play, performing a part with sincerity and effort, but no understanding of the substance; others are just friendly and open in that great Midwestern way (this was the case at Vie in Wesern Springs); others are just incompetent, and no amount of charm will redeem them; and my least favorite, which occurred at Sullivan's Steakhouse in N'ville, is when they understand they are supposed to guide and help you, and start talking down to you and talking up all the offerings like they are clearly the best in the world or the best you are ever likely to have anyway - I guess that one is rude.

Anyway, our waiter explained earnestly how one of the dishes had rockford (trust me, that is exactly what he said ) cheese on it, and went through other parts of the menu in a similar manner. Quite comical, I assure you, though we did not laugh until we left. The comedy continued with the food, where I was presented with an overstuffed Croque Monsieur, with 5 times the ham I had ever seen on such a sandwich - Carnegie Deli meets Les Deux Magots. It was not a bad sandwich aside from being over the top in every aspect, a gross parody of a Croque Monsieur, and much more than I wanted to eat.

I also sampled a decent roast pepper soup, and my companions had the pork roast and sauteed chicken sandwich. All were deemed tasty, and I suppose we will be back. To be fair, I need to go to dinner there, at least so I can see what caricatures of French food they will be serving then. Prices were good, food was decent, tho not as good as Tango on either count, which explains why no one goes there, still.

This one is noisy, too, and in a particularly nice touch, they have added blaring music outside to the pre-existing din of the traffic on Washington. Some day a daring city planner will figure out a way to remove all that traffic from the middle of what is, mostly, a lovely downtown area, and we will all be grateful. But I digress from my rant now.

Bistrot Margot
in Naperville!
216 S. Washington Street
Naperville, IL 60540

http://www.bistrotmargot.com/naperville.htm

The "Carnegie Deli meets Deux Magots" sandwich reminds me of a similar ingenuous attempt to both emulate and improve upon a European original. My first cooking gig was at a bakery/cafe that wanted to bring Vienna to the burbs--a sort of proto-Julius Meinl. The owner, having spent time in Germany and Austria spared no expense in getting the best imported fruit syrups for drinks and westphalian ham for making delicious sandwiches.

But, being an all-American boy, the one thing he felt he could improve upon was the quantity of meat in the sandwich. It had really bugged him all through his travels that here they had this delicious ham, better than anything in the states, and they were so stingy with it-- just a few paper thin slices on the whole sandwich!! Pathetic. So, he instructed us to take that westphalian ham, slice it THICK and pile it on the good rye bread.

The spectacle of his disappointment as he tore into that first sandwich, stacked high with slabs of the expensive, now unchewable delicacy will stay with me till I die. He was utterly bewildered that more could be not only not better, but demonstrably worse. To his credit, he quickly came around to the opinion that perhaps the Europeans did know how to make a tasty sandwich, and we should just follow their lead.