La Sardine

I went to La Sardine last night for the $20 pre fixe. It is now $22, but still a good deal. I do not think I would come here on a regular night, but would return for the Tuesday special.

For first courses we had:

1. Onion soup - good standard fare, nothing mind-blowing but nothing wrong with it either
2. Oxtail with gnocchi - the best starter I thought, tender pieces of shredded oxtail with 3 light gnocchi floating in a pool of red wine sauce
3. Mussels - I myself don't care for them, but dining mate said that the mussels at the Hopleaf were superior (she liked the belgian ale prep better than the white wine)

For Entrees we had:

1. Mushroom ragout - the standout I felt. Three of us were eating our words, b/c we admonished our companion who ordered this. My exact words were, "that is going to be a really boring dish". Well, I was wrong. The mushrooms had the best flavor of those I've tasted.

2. Hangar steak - I ordered this and it was good, not great. I expected more b/c a review I read on metromix was raving about it.

3. Rabbit ragout - Similar dish to the mushroom ragout except with rabbit taking the place of the mushrooms. My second favorite.

4. Bouillabaisse - good but again nothing spectacular.

For Desserts we had:

1. Sorbets - what you'd expect (blood orange, lychee and passion fruit)
2. Cheese - nice presentation and decent cheese, but I think my tastebuds are jaded from the amazing plate enjoyed at Avec last week.
3. Creme Brulee - excellent. Light, creamy with an excellent crunch on top.

As you can see from the post, nothing was bad, but aside from the mushrooms nothing really stood out. Tuesdays are a good deal, but if I was to go for French on the weekend, I would probably choose a different bistro. La Sardine's menu is online at lasardine.com

LTH,

Had a very nice dinner at La Sardine last evening, home of, along with Le Bouchon, the hands down best Lyonnaise salad, no, check that, the best salad period, in Chicago.

La Sardine Lyonnaise


Last evening's special Cassoulet Toulousian, laden with meats (lamb/pork/duck) and perfectly cooked white beans was the second best, after RevrendAndy's yearly Cassoulet party, I've had the pleasure of tasting. Skatewing, an often seen special, matched perfectly with wild rice and spinach.

My friend John had the whitefish with cous cous and a shitake & artichoke bean ragout and Jan had hanger steak with my ordering variation. La Sardine serves sliced hanger steak with mashed potato and bordelaise sauce, I prefer, as does Jan, hanger steak served in the same fashion as the house steak and fries, left whole and served with fries and a compound butter.

I've yet to go to La Sardine for the lunch 3-course prix fixe for $22, Monday night 1/2 price wine or the $25 3-course prix fixe Tuesday, but that's high on my list for 2006.

Enjoy,
Gary

La Sardine
111 N Carpenter St
Chicago, IL 60607
312-421-2800
http://frenchrestaurantschicago.com/

Le Bouchon
1958 N Damen
Chicago, IL 60647
773-862-6600
http://www.lebouchonofchicago.com

G Wiv wrote:Had a very nice dinner at La Sardine last evening, home of, along with Le Bouchon, the hands down best Lyonnaise salad, no, check that, the best salad period, in Chicago.

Gary,

Could that rating have anything to do with the fact that there appear to be more lardons than lettuce?

Best,
Michael

eatchicago wrote:Could that rating have anything to do with the fact that there appear to be more lardons than lettuce?

Michael,

Hummm, maybe......not to mention nicely crisped croutons.

Enjoy,
Gary

I just got back from Lyon, where I had salade lyonnaise on several occasions, and I can confirm that La Sardine's version ranks right up there with the genuine article. Mmmm....lardons...

I third or fourth the endorsement of La Sardine's Lyonnaise as being a great salad.

To be honest, the lardons, while not excessive in totality, are too big individually. I really think they should be chopped a bit smaller. Aside from that quibble, it is close to perfection.

I get this salad every time I am at Sardine or Bouchon, and I concur, it is the best. The lardons are great, but the croutons, which are sauteed in the lardon renderings to order and served hot also make this salad that great.

Ryanj wrote:The lardons are great, but the croutons, which are sauteed in the lardon renderings to order and served hot also make this salad that great.

Serious bacon fat flavor crutons Friday, good god I love the Lyonnaise at La Sardine. If anything the Lyonnaise has gotten better over the years.

La Sardine was packed like sardines in a can Friday. Not sure how much of it was due to restaurant week, but they were busier than I have seen in the past, we waited at the pleasant bar 40-minutes past our reservations, tasty house made potato chips making the wait go faster.

We all ordered fish, three in observance of Friday in Lent, one because he was in the mood for skate, which was cooked perfectly with a brown butter caper sauce. Sorrel sauce a nice accent to med-rare salmon and the Bouillabaisse looked good, though I did not taste. Chocolate Souffle loved by all at the table, as was the Apple tart, we split on the banana sorbet, myself in the damn tasty camp.

Service friendly, professional, above reproach with, the increasingly rare, well spaced tables.

Toward the end of the evening, when the restaurant had mostly cleared out, a young hip couple was seated next to us and immediately moved to a larger table at the edge of the room. They moved one more time, nervous energy almost visible, and then, with a flip of their scarves. He, Afghan, she, vintage Valentino, set blue tinted glasses in place and skittered out.

Enjoy,
Gary

La Sardine is one of the best restaurants in chicago the food is delicoius and the people are nice

I went there and the French food is second to none

I had the

Le Steak Grillé Maître d'Hôtel
Grilled Steak, Garlic Butter,
House-Made Fries
$19.50 well worth the price and trully delicous will definetly be back

Angelo Pyroulis

Welcome Angelo!

I like their steak and fries too - they smell so good that it's hard to get anything else if someone I am near orders that! They also have a salmon dish that is sometimes on the specials menu - it has some sort of light buttery sauce that I just want to drink. Amazing.

Wife and I had a really good meal here last night. It's a really charming room with a great bar area. Highlights were lobster bisque (a special), sweetbreads, chocolate souffle. Service was outstanding. They split many of the dishes for us, free of charge. It turned into kind of a mini-tasting menu. They even split glasses of wine.

The house was not full on a Saturday night. The demographics were decidedly older and un-hipster like. I worry about the future of straightforward French dining in Chicago. Maybe they need to hire a chemist to make the dishes more interesting?

Anyway, highly recommended if you go for this sort of thing.

Here is the website for Le Sardine, should you want to check out the menu or book a table. Bon appetit!

Wow! I went to La Sardine last night for the first time for a family dinner, at the suggestion of my in-laws who love the place and frequent it regularly. We had a lovely dinner and a couple of great bottles of wine (1/2 price on Mondays!). I ordered a couple of items from their specials menu: the tomato, cucumber and gorgonzola salad to start and halibut + israeli cous-cous, with orange, fennel and vinegar broth. Both items were excellent, supremely fresh and well prepared. The chocolate souflee sealed the deal at the end of the evening.

This restaurant had not been on my radar before last night, but I will definitely return for another (hopefully) great meal.

La Sardine is our go to French Restaurant. We eat there about once every 6 weeks or so. We met friends from the western and far northern suburbs there over the holidays and had a delicious tasting menu paired with great french wines. Everyone raved about the dinner and the service and of course the souffles. We took our middle daughter and the rest of the family there for her 26th birthday and again, impeccable service and food.
Now I'm craving the lyonnaise salad and the steak frites.

teatpuller wrote:The demographics were decidedly older and un-hipster like. I worry about the future of straightforward French dining in Chicago. Maybe they need to hire a chemist to make the dishes more interesting?

I'm pretty mystified by this criticism, heaven forbid that the young and beautiful not comprise the majority of a restaurant's clientele, the horrors! And what on earth would they need a chemist for? It's not a molecular gastronomy joint, it's a French bistro/brasserie and has never pretended to be anything else. And that's what makes it great, fresh and delicious renditions of french food in a comfortable atmosphere and top notch service. La Sardine has long been our go to French restaurant (although we haven't been in a while because of an acute babysitter shortage) because it so reliably churns out fantastic food.

SMT wrote:

teatpuller wrote:I'm pretty mystified by this criticism, heaven forbid that the young and beautiful not comprise the majority of a restaurant's clientele, the horrors! And what on earth would they need a chemist for? It's not a molecular gastronomy joint, it's a French bistro/brasserie and has never pretended to be anything else. And that's what makes it great, fresh and delicious renditions of french food in a comfortable atmosphere and top notch service.

First off, it was a jibe at those who prefer style over substance.

How many traditional French restaurants are there in the area compared to say, 10 or 20 years ago? The point was, it was a Saturday night and half the place was empty! Not a good sign for fans of French food.

teatpuller wrote:How many traditional French restaurants are there in the area compared to say, 10 or 20 years ago? The point was, it was a Saturday night and half the place was empty! Not a good sign for fans of French food.

I'll try to keep this part of my response brief so as not to go too far off on a tangent. French food and restaurants have been declining in popularity for many years, in Chicago as well as most big cities in North America. Crain's Chicago Business did an article about it back in September 2006, titled "Malaise in French dining" (click here), about how many traditional French restaurants were closing even back then. There are several reasons, but I think the biggest one is the explosion of interest in all cuisines, with creative, contemporary techniques applied to many different kinds of food. Go back 30-40 years and high-end restaurants consisted almost exclusively of places usually identified as French. Now, there are few high-end French restaurants left; the only one I can think of in Chicagoland is Everest. The most creative chefs have global influences on their food and often pass under the umbrella of "contemporary American" if only because their food doesn't readily fall into any category of traditional cuisine. That's compounded by the fact that many of our best, most creative chefs are in casual, moderately-priced venues rather than formal, expensive temples of haute cuisine. French food tends to survive primarily in traditional French bistros such as La Sardine and a few dozen others in Chicago and its suburbs. The number of such bistros has been stable over the past 5-10 years, with a few closing (e.g. Bistro 110, Cafe Matou) and a few others opening (Bistro Bordeaux).

Getting back to La Sardine, I think it's solid, as good a French bistro as you'll find anywhere in Chicagoland. The food is very traditional, not anything all that unusual (if you're familiar with French cuisine), but extremely well-prepared and delicious. It's also very affordable, even more so if you go on Tuesday night for their prix fixe special, any three courses for $27.50. Last time I went was on a Tuesday and they were packed; I've also been on a Saturday and noticed a good crowd, but that was a year or two ago. Oh, and those for whom Bucktown is more convenient should be aware that Le Bouchon in that neighborhood has the same ownership as La Sardine and a similar menu, including the Tuesday prix fixe special. I would hate to see either one close for lack of business, as they do what they do so well.

One of the unfortunate facts of life in the restaurant business is that all the attention goes to new places, while others that have been around for a while fly under the radar despite continued excellence. Based on our dinner last night, La Sardine is a perfect example.

We were there on a Tuesday, when they have their tremendous bargain, any three courses (app-main-dessert) now for $35. The menu was slightly different from the everyday website version, possibly because they understandably need to exclude their priciest items from this special.

The room was quite full (although I'm not sure how full they are on days other than Tuesdays) and the noise level was reasonable and conversation-friendly.

Unfortunately, I forgot to take photos until dessert. So a narrative description will have to suffice.

We both started with salads, the Salade Lyonnaise and the Salade d'Endives. Both were excellent, with extremely generous quantities of the premium ingredients (lardons and roquefort, respectively).

We then both had the bouillabaise, and it too was excellent. It was topped with meat from a large lobster claw, and also included plenty of other seafood, all in a delicious broth.

We finished with the chocolate souffle, with creme anglaise:

And the tarte aux pommes:

Both were excellent, perhaps the best version of each I've ever had.

Despite last year's tragic death of its owner (whose son was on site running things last night), La Sardine is still turning out wonderful French cuisine. Don't overlook it!

Get your fix now before the McDonald's HQ opens across the street and all the execs discover it.

La Sardine is our favorite restaurant in Chicago! We are there at least once a month and while we miss Jean Claude, his family has continued to maintain his high standards. Jim is an excellent bartender and if you're lucky enough to have Dan as your server, you will be very well taken care of. The Lyonaisse salad is the best I've ever had-even in France and the bouillabaisse is fabulous. We are lucky to have such a great restaurant in our city. I haven't been there when it isn't busy-thank goodness because I don't want it to ever go away.

For a variety of reasons - primary among them the Rube Goldberg-like schedules of my girlfriend and I - we don't dine out quite as frequently as we used to. The result is we take our scarce opportunities to try places new to us. Seems there's always an opening that looks good or we head to some GNR that's been on my list for too long.

The downside is I forget to dance with the ones what brung me, and last night's meal at La Sardine was a reminder of what I've been missing. Over the years, I've been to Bouchon/Sardine countless times, and it's easy to forget how well they do what they do well. We had what I'd say was a near-flawless meal of unfussy, lovingly prepared bistro-ish deliciousness - duck breast for me, a whole trout preparation for my girlfriend, mussels to start and an is-that-for-real? souffle to close. Unhurried, friendly service, a lively-not-packed dining room, a lovely detour from the work week - I was really grateful for a great, four-on-the-floor restaurant experience. I needed that.

This is what I want tonight.

G Wiv wrote:La Sardine Lyonnaise

Holy shit!!!!
Yes I’ve been to Lyon
Wooooow

I've replaced the photos in my earlier post above, which were no longer viewable.

The three-course prix fixe on Tuesdays is now $38.

Guys. The Cassoulet is phenomenal. Had to go talk to the chef. It is something that is missing from my life in LA. Beans are everything