Seattle has a number of terrific French restaurants. It seems I'm constantly discovering new places that I absolutely must try.
In a stroke of fantastic luck, a small plates French restaurant has opened up down the street from me. Almost as invisible as Platform 9-3/4 at King's Cross, Gainsbourg (named for Serge Gainsbourg, a French actor, director, and singer-songwriter) is hidden between La Botana and Pola Belle and offers a variety of small plates at a surprisingly small cost. Darkly lit with a large, framed photographs of Gainsbourg on walls, movies projected on the back wall. Late night Tuesday happy hours with consecutive viewings of Twin Peaks.
Here is a terribly lit picture of the restaurant from someone's Flickr account. It looks nearly nothing like this in person, because in person the place is happily not at the mercy of a flash bulb.
The ambiance is fun, but the biggest draw is the food, of course. I've been to too many places that offer small plates at such an exorbitant cost, that it's a sizeable blow to one's wallet to try more than maybe three dishes. For example, Gainsbourg offers a classic French Onion Soup for $5, a Roasted Beet Salad with Pt. Reyes Bleu Cheese and Hazelnuts for $6, and a lovely plate of Fromage and Charcuterie (Rosette de Lyon salami, Coppacola, Hungarian salami, French Brie, Ewephoria, Double Gloucester, Nicoise olives, stone-ground mustard, cornichons) for $9. The portions are appropriate and you can get away with ordering nearly everything on the menu for $30-40 person (including drinks).
I've been dying to take my friends Sarah, Tanielle, and Emily here since I first went. Unfortunately Tanielle was struck with acute bronchitis, but Sarah and Emily and I continued on with our plans.
For about $40 a-piece (including drinks, tip, and tax) we ordered to share:
French onion soup (one for each of us)
Spring asparagus
Roasted mushrooms
Fromage and Charcuterie (I don't know which brie they buy, but it's fantastic)
Steak Frites with sauteed shallots
Poisson Frites (with breaded, fried tilapia)
Roasted fennel bulb stuffed with Gruyere
Roasted beet salad with all the acoutrements listed above
Napolean (from Larsen's Bakery in Ballard)
Chocolate Lava cake
I particularly love their French onion soup. I find it very authentic. While I often order French onion soup, it frustrates me when restaurants offer a few tablespoons of dark broth covered with half a loaf of bread and a mound of gluey cheese that seems impossible to pentrate. Gainsbourg does it the French way. Rich broth with a reasonable slice of toasted baguette covered with a bit of Gruyere. You can actually enjoy the richness of the soup without requiring a chainsaw to get to it.
Everything was as excellent as always, but we really loved the roasted beet salad and roasted fennel bulb--which none of us had tried before. I'd had raw fennel, with its sharp anise-y flavor, but the roasting really mellowed that out to a slightly nutty flavor and the taste of something like a celery-cabbage hybrid. (Which I realize maybe doesn't sound appealing, but it was really very good.) Note that they take medium-rare very seriously. I like my meat pretty rare, but it was a bit too rare for Sarah and Emily.
The tilapia was excellent --very fresh tasting and delicate, even though it was fried. We requested sides of their herbed ketchup and garlic aioli for the frites. And I really can't say enough how fantastic their lava cake was. Sarah and I nearly passed out from love after the first bite, and spent the rest of the time trying to come up with superlative descriptions, "It's so silky!" "Like velvet, really!" "So smooth!" (While Emily looked on us with amusement.) We scraped the plate clean.
The service has notably improved. The first two times I've gone it's taken much effort to get basic silverware and the attention of our waitstaff. The staff has always been polite and friendly enough, but at busier times be prepared to wait. (I'd gone around 7PM on Friday night before, and that is a Very Busy Time. This time we went at the early hour of 6PM on a Saturday and it was nearly empty when we walked in, but fully filled as we left.)
Gainsbourg
8550 Greenwood Ave N.
Seattle, WA 98103
(206) 781-2224
