32. Cafe du Parc

There are a total of twelve French restaurants on the 100 Best List. I hate French food. Every time I go to a French restaurant, I act like a five year old and order a baguette with brie. But I am a big girl now, and I have to meet this head on. The first of my twelve forays in to Frency town was at Cafe du Parc. Its the less fancy restaurant at the Willard, which is a place I hope to loiter in one day when I’m rich and tipsy. But I digress…This was the second Restaurant Week stop and like the first, I know that Cafe du Parc did not put its best foot forward. All I’ve heard about was the mussels the mussels the mussels, but alas they were not on the menu. What was on the menu were a choice of two appetizers, a choice of two mains and then a de facto choice for a cheese plate and dessert. Worst of all, when I checked the website later, I found out that the lunch menu for Restaurant Week was exactly the same as the dinner one, but dinner included a (very small) cheese plate. Lame. The cheese plate was not worth $15. But the food…

I started with the pate pastry, which though very dog food-esque in appearance was pretty delicious. Much like my love of confit, I would eat just about anything with foie gras. And I did. And it was delicious. Dining partner Rachel had the endive soup, which in my head probably tasted like creamy toothpaste, but she said it was tasty. Not tasty enough to finish though, she deemed it “too endivey”. (Duh?) We both had the same as our main course, the pollack. It was cooked perfectly and on a giant bed of leeks and cream sauce. I probably could make that dish myself but it was still very yummy and the Cafe du Parc has significantly less chipped dinnerware than I do. So a point goes in their column. Then came the aforementioned cheese course—a soft cheese served with some raisin toast and a small salad. Very nice but again, not worth $15. And finally there was a “choice” of pastries, which amounted to either a chocolate eclair or raspberry lemon tart. We had one of each. They were pretty, but seemed like something I could have picked up at Vie De France for much less. 

The restaurant itself was nice, The Willard really can’t mess things up too badly, but I felt that the upstairs portion of the cafe had the charm of a department store cafe. A Paris department store, but nonetheless, a department store. Best of all though, the family at the table next to us were real live actual French people speaking real live French. I thought of impressing them with my 8th grade French, because if I know anything about French people, they are not really concerned with verb conjugation. But by the time I pulled my face out of my tart and cappuccino, they were off to do something tres chic.