Bistro, brasserie, cafe and restaurant — all these terms came from the gastronomy-minded French.
Nationwide, French cuisine is enjoying a surge in popularity, and local eateries are capitalizing on the trend. Several French restaurants have opened in Salt Lake City in the past few months — Rendezvous, Au Bon Appetit and Dijon Provencal Bistro. And former Utah Jazz center Mark Eaton and San Francisco restaurateur Aaron Ferer are building a French restaurant in Sugar House, a departure from the Italian formula of their first spot, Tuscany. (Last week they opened a second Italian restaurant, Emilia, at Jordan Commons.)
More places now call themselves "bistros" or "brasseries," as in Absolute! Restaurant and Brasserie, Bistro Toujours in Park City, the Jasmine China Bistro, the Urban Bistro Market and 3rd West Bistro.
So what makes a bistro different from a cafe (such as the new Orbit Cafe, also billed as an "Internet cafe")? To paraphrase Shakespeare, would food in a brasserie by any other name taste as good?
I asked Roland Passot, one of San Francisco's brightest star chefs, who conducted a "guest chef" dinner and class last week at the Metropolitan Restaurant. His French restaurant, La Folie (which means "craziness" in French), was one of only seven restaurants to capture a four-star rating last year from the San Francisco Chronicle. Passot, who grew up in France and moved to the United States 26 years ago, also owns three popular brasseries called Left Bank.
In the '60s, gourmet French food took America by storm, with Jackie Kennedy's French chef whipping up White House meals and Julia Child on television telling us how to do the same thing at home. But by the '80s, fussy haute cuisine had taken a back burner to Italian, Pacific Rim and other international cuisines. Also, regional cooking became trendy — Southwestern, Cajun, California and so on.
"People got tired of all the fancy things and the heavy sauces," Passot explained. "But today, we're getting bistros and brasseries that are more casual and approachable, so people feel more comfortable. And we're using more local ingredients instead of importing them. Before, we were bringing in things like strawberries, foie gras and wine. Now the farming industry and the wineries here are producing better products."
If French food is back in style, we'd better learn the lingo.
A bistro is a small restaurant, usually no more than 40 seats, with more home-style French cooking than gourmet cuisine, said Passot. Epicurious.com's food dictionary defines a bistro as "a small cafe, usually serving modest, down-to-earth food and wine. This word is also sometimes used to refer to a small nightclub."
A brasserie, says Passot, is "a very large, high-volume place, 150-250 seats, usually with a brewery that serves beer by the tap. They do a lot of the classical, braised dishes cooked on the side of the stove, like coq au vin (chicken with wine) and beef a la bourguignonne (beef cooked in red wine) — the kind of cooking I grew up with." Brasserie food is informal, simple and hearty, but not as casual as that found in a bistro.
So, what's a cafe? "A little place — a coffee shop — where you find sandwiches and a few dishes, but not full kitchen service; a little salade Nicoise, or a little quiche Lorraine."
And a restaurant in France means fine dining — "More formal, with tablecloths, china, all the right silverware and glasses."
Of course, Americans let these terms mean whatever they want. We have restaurants serving fast food on a napkin, brasseries serving Scandinavian food and bistros serving sushi.
Passot's menu at the Metropolitan included creative combinations, such as cauliflower soup with curried pears and lobster, seared sea scallops with leek fondue and truffle-butter emulsions, and tuna tartare with lobster, osetra caviar, spaghetti squash and a cappuccino froth. But he's against "fusion," or combining different ethnic cuisines (i.e., Mexican pizza).
"Fusion can become confusion," he said. "I'm a big believer of tradition. If people want to eat French food, they go to a French restaurant. If I want Chinese or Italian food, I go to a Chinese or Italian restaurant. I don't go crazy and mix everything up. Not that I think it's all bad, but it can be way too much."
Well, vive la France!
E-MAIL: vphillips@desnews.com