| Calgary’s superstar chef Michael Allemeier has had quite a change of scenery recently, moving from Teatro to oversee all the prepared food at Wrayton's Fresh Market in Northland Village.
How someone as urbane as Chef Allemeier, whose appearances on Food Network's Cook Like a Chef are evidence of his limitless sophistication, could be in a mall next to Wal-Mart is perplexing, but here we are. And Wrayton’s Fresh Market is certainly trying to create a little oasis in the desert that is fine dining in Calgary’s northwest. Le Bistro Beni is the best choice I've found in the area for a nice meal, and it's certainly competitively priced.
The front section of Wrayton's Fresh Market (on the corner of Crowchild Tr. and Northland Dr. N.W.) has been converted into a French bistro, Le Bistro Beni (open every day for lunch and dinner, except Sunday lunch, phone 205-4253), serving classics like roast chicken, steamed mussels with French fries, and a frisée salad with a soft poached egg. The room is long and narrow, and has a full vista of the parking lot through floor-to-ceiling windows that can be rolled up in the summer. It should be a very nice place to sit out and enjoy a cool late evening meal, provided you don’t get taken out by a minivan driver with a death wish.
We began the evening with a selection of hors d’oeuvres, which were very good. The frog’s legs fritters ($9) – the name sounds like an Emerson Lake and Palmer album – were served over greens with a remoulade. The caper-based sauce went perfectly with the accompanying deep-fried capers and caper-berries. The chicken liver pâté ($8) was light, tasty and beautiful. Pâté can be heavy, but this house-made version floated onto the toast it came with. The least successful appetizer was the chickpea and pumpkin fritters ($9), which would have benefited from a little more seasoning.
The salads were wonderfully composed and dressed with a light touch – a bit more vinegar in the dressing wouldn’t have hurt, but I suspect it might have masked the delicacy of the wine. The frisée greens with bacon ($8) had a slightly broken soft-poached egg on top, and the runny yolk blended with the dressing into a makeshift hollandaise – this is traditional French bistro cooking at its finest. The chicken liver salad ($7) was similarly excellent. Overcooked chicken livers are like squash balls (I’ve made that mistake a few times), but these were perfect.
The main courses were generally wonderful. The steak frites ($19) had a perfectly medium rare and tender steak, although the frites were a bit tepid when they arrived – I think once Le Bistro Beni is open for a little while the service from kitchen to table will speed up a bit. The veal liver with Dijon mustard and crisp onions ($18) was one of the best things I’ve eaten in a long time – it was so tender, you could have cut the liver with the back of your knife. The wild sockeye salmon ($19) was slightly undercooked and moist – perfectly cooked, in my opinion – and the richness of the fish contrasted well with the spinach and the Puy lentils it came with. It’s really a visionary bit of cooking to pair fish with lentils – it’s also easy to cook at home, but no one thinks of pairing them. The steamed mussels with fries ($15) had flavourful mussels, which is a rarity so far from the sea, and the fries were perfectly seasoned and came with a decadent homemade mayonnaise.
The desserts are bistro classics. We had profiteroles and crépes with orange sauce – I’d probably give the profiteroles a miss as they were kind of tough, but the crépes were lovely.
If there’s anything that Le Bistro Beni could improve upon, and this is a very small point, it’s the attentiveness of the service. Our server was pleasant and helpful, but even though the restaurant wasn’t busy, we had to ask to order the wine, had to pour the wine (which was being chilled on the neighbouring table), and had to ask for dessert menus. But the service certainly wasn’t entirely bad, and I chalk the flaws up to the fact that the place is new.
In the end, we enjoyed our meal very much. I’d say that the other French bistros in town – JoJo, Trocadero and Fleur du Sel – have some serious competition from a very unlikely location. |
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