Le Grand Bistro and Oyster Bar

Le Grand just opened in June of this year, and soared to the top of my wish list ever since I tasted their pickled oyster and salmon-on-a-potato-chip small bites at 5280 Dines a couple months ago.

Le Grand claims it offers "everyday French comfort food," but it also prides itself on serving a variety of fresh, raw oysters.

Styled like a Parisian brasserie, Le Grand is a large, roomy restaurant, with numerous tables and booths, and a banquet room in back. The interior is a bit darkly lit, with tile floors and deep-red walls decorated by whimsical farm animal drawings.

We arrived with another couple on a Saturday night, with reservations for 6:30 pm. Their dinner menu was extensive. Diners can choose between six different oyster varieties, numerous other seafood bar options, small plates, large plates, charcuterie, and cheeses. Oh, and desserts.

We started with two each of the Kumamotos ($3.5 each) and Malpeque ($2.5 each) oysters.

Oysters: Kumamotos and Malpeque

They were served on the half shell with lemon, horseradish, mignonette sauce, and cocktail sauce. If I were along the coast somewhere, I'd have guessed the oysters were plucked from the ocean earlier that day. But clearly I was actually in Denver, and I just have to marvel at how fresh the oysters tasted that far inland.

We also split three different charcuterie: Head Cheese ($4), Rabbit Rillette ($4), and Foie Gras Mousse ($9).
 

Head Cheese

Cooked from pork cheeks, the head cheese was packed with a multitude of ingredients and flavors. It was flavored with garlic, shallots, and many other herbs and spices, including what tasted like allspice. I am by no means a head cheese expert, but I felt it was just too many flavors in each bite.

Rabbit Rillete

The rabbit rillette was made of rabbit confit and duck fat, and flavored with chives and sea salt. It had a texture like a thick gravy, with tiny pieces of the rabbit confit throughout. Spreading it on the toasted bread made for a rich, satisfying bite of saturated fat.

Foie Gras Mousse

The Foie Gras mousse was made with Hudson Valley foie gras, Sauturnes (yeah I had to look that up, it's a sweet French wine), and heavy cream. Like the rillete, it was extremely rich, with a smooth, velvety texture. More saturated fat heaven.

We split the Jarret D’agneau Braisé ($25), which basically translated to braised lamb shank.

Braised Lamb Shank

The lamb was served alongside parsnip puree, baby carrots, and pearl onions. The meat was cooked perfectly to very tender, and easily fell off the bone with some help from a fork. The lamb was complimented with the flavors of the starchy parsnips and sweet carrots and onions.

Unlike Le Central and Pierre Michel, which both serve giant, American-sized portions, I was pleased that Le Grand stuck to more traditional French serving sizes. The small quantities were perfect for the rich, flavorful food offered.

While the food was very good, service was generally slow and disorganized (I seem to be echoing a million Yelp reviewers on this point). Our waitress was often hard to track down, and we had multiple servers bringing bread, plates, drinks, and food to the table.

We had sat down at 6:30, with plans to head to Comedy Works a couple blocks away for an 8:30 show. Our entrees didn't arrive until about 7:50, and that was after notifying our waitress that we had a dinner deadline. Fortunately the waitstaff kicked into high gear when we told them about the show, and we made it to Comedy Works without issue.

Regretfully, having to rush out for our show meant we couldn't try the intriguing-looking Foie Gras Creme Brulee dessert.

Le Grand was a great spot for authentic French food, but they need to work on the clunky service.

Casual Dining

(7 of 10)

Pros: Excellent food, loved the ambiance and decor. Oysters were extremely fresh.
Cons: Slow, disorganized service

Website:
http://www.legranddenver.com/

Euclid Hall

For those who can't resist the allure of fried pig ears washed down with freshly brewed ale, there is Euclid Hall.  Apparently, I am precisely one of those people. 

Euclid Hall has all the elements for success in Denver: a historic downtown location, unusual and cholesterol-laden pub-style food, an extensive beer menu, and a well-known chef/owner. 

We arrived with a couple of friends for a very early (4pm-ish) Saturday night dinner. The restaurant was relatively busy for the early hour. We were seated upstairs and quickly got started with a round of drinks. Euclid Hall has an extensive beer menu, including my husband's beloved Lost Abbey, which is a bit of a rare find. He was instantly happy.

We began with a couple of starters: Buffalo Style Pig Ears and Seared Scallops.

First, the Buffalo Style Pig Ears:

Buffalo Style Pig Ears

These weren't what I was expecting. I thought the ears would look, you know, a lot more like ears than generously breaded, sliced-up ear slivers. They were also much softer than I had anticipated and had a very mild flavor. In fact, I mostly just tasted the fried exterior, which was very well seasoned but seemed to overwhelm whatever cartilage flavor may have existed.

Next were the seared scallops:

Seared Scallops with Peaches and Mustard

This was a much more traditional appetizer, and also much lighter than our pig ears. The scallops tasted lovely and were cooked perfectly. They were served with fresh peaches and Euclid Hall's traditional mustard, which I could have lived without in this dish.

Euclid Hall is known for its sausages and mustards, so we knew we had to try at least one. In an attempt to be adventurous (since eating pig ears wasn't enough), we settled on the Boudin Noir, a blood sausage.

Boudin Noir (Blood Sausage)

That ominous-looking sausage was my first blood sausage ever, and it certainly wasn't as scary as the name made it sound. It had a crumbly texture and a sweet flavor that was complimented by the addition of golden raisins to the sausage. Even not being much of a sausage fan, I really enjoyed the taste. It came with the grainy mustard assortment below, each with a unique flavor that nicely complimented the sausage (much better than it had with the scallops).

Mustards

Even after the blood sausage and pig ears, I had another journey into uncharted food territory ahead of me: poutine, the French Canadian grease-bomb staple, is prominent on the Euclid Hall menu. I've never seen this dish at any Colorado establishment, but Euclid Hall bravely serves it up in several varieties.

My husband and I split the lamb poutine, which came with braised and grilled lamb, goat cheese, and espagnole sauce.

Lamb Poutine

The lamb was tasty and well cooked, the goat cheese was as delicious as goat cheese always is, the sauce was too salty for my taste. Overall a decent pile of food, but not as good as its more ambitious counterpart, the cleverly titled Duck Duck Goose poutine:

Duck Duck Goose Poutine

This impressive pile of saturated fat-laden deliciousness included duck gravy, black pepper, cheese curds, a sunny-side up duck egg, and goose foie gras. I loved the combination of ingredients, particularly the more traditional poutine toppings of gravy and cheese curds. I always feel that fois gras should be the center of attention on any dish it's served, so I struggled with the thought of having that tiny piece be a compliment to a giant dish of French fries. 

One last note about the food at Euclid Hall: besides the intense cholesterol punch, it is very heavy on the salt. I needed quite a bit of water to counteract all the sodium as I ate.

After all that delicious and heavy food, it was time for dessert.

We settled on splitting a Red Velvet Cupcake and the Sourdough Waffle Ice Cream Sandwich.

First, the Red Velvet Cupcake:

Red Velvet Cupcake

The frosting on this little guy was incredible. It was soft and airy, almost like marshmallow fluff atop the moist, deep-red cupcake.

 And the Sourdough Waffle Ice Cream Sandwich, served with salted butterscotch ice cream with a praline topping:

Sourdough Waffle Ice Cream Sandwich

These sourdough waffles are the same carby staples that make up Euclid Hall's intriguing Chicken and Waffles dish. I didn't care for the sour flavor coupled with the sweet ice cream, but the ice cream itself - and its crunchy praline topping - was outstanding.  

We had an excellent waitress looking after us all night, and she suggested we attend Euclid Hall's Great American Beer Festival Midnight Breakfast on September 29. The menu offerings looked delicious, but the thought of packing my stomach with so much grease and beer at midnight on a Thursday night and then trying to wake up at the crack of dawn the next morning for work sounded a bit like torture. Oh well. 

Even after all the food we ingested, we didn't get a chance to try many many dishes that sounded fantastic, including bruleed bone marrow, a brat burger, or funnel cake fried bananas. Definitely need another visit.

Casual Dining

 (8 of 10)

Pros: Great beer selection, great service, unique dishes

Cons: Very fatty and salty food, restaurant can be loud

Website:

http://euclidhall.com/

Restaurant Kevin Taylor

One bit of insight into my super-secret personal life that I'm sure you all have been dying to know more about: my husband and I are relatively experienced at dropping substantial amounts of money for delicious French food in Las Vegas.

We've been looking for a place in Denver that would take our money in exchange for an equally delicious meal as what we've had in Vegas. Our first try, at Mizuna, was fairly disappointing. Last weekend, it was on to Restaurant Kevin Taylor, which has received the extraordinary-for-Denver accolades of the AAA Four Diamond Award and Forbes's Four-Star Ranking.

Kevin Taylor is one of very few big-name chefs from Colorado, and he has the entire Kevin Taylor Restaurant Group in Denver under his belt. Clearly he must be a fairly big deal to have his fancy restaurant carry his name.

Kevin Taylor is tucked in the beautiful Hotel Teatro near the Performing Arts Center downtown, making it the first restaurant-in-a-hotel I've really been to in Denver. While squarely downtown, the arts area of Denver feels quiet and off-the-beaten-path compared to a typical downtown dining experience.

We had no problem valeting our vehicle for an $8 price tag (hotel guests valet free) and found the restaurant immediately to our right after walking into Hotel Teatro.

The restaurant itself was a little odd. For as fancy as Restaurant Kevin Taylor is supposed to be, there was no host or hostess present to seat us. We had to wait for a waiter to finish with customers before being seated by him. And you'll need a tour guide to take you to the bathrooms. No joke. You have to exit the restaurant, take the second elevator to your right, head to the basement level, walk all the way down the hallway to your right, and then you are at the ladies room.

But the thing that struck me most was there was no one there. It was 7 pm on a Saturday night in the middle of the summer, and there were only four other couples eating that night. But needless to say we received very good service and plenty of attention from the waitstaff.

Anyway, on to the food.

Restaurant Kevin Taylor had just unveiled a new menu at the evening of our visit, which we were assured by our waiter that the entire staff had sampled and everything was superb.

We started out with a French favorite for my husband and me: foie gras. In this case, it was the Seared French Foie Gras ($16), which came with (direct from menu) Colorado Peach Cobbler, Pistachio Black Pepper Streusel, Armagnac Crema, Peach Gastrique.

Seared French Foie Gras

Almost too beautiful to eat. This was a lovely combination of flavors and textures that blended together perfectly. The armagnac cream (yellowish mound in upper right) was a liquor-laced sweet foam blob, and I've never tasted anything quite like it before. My only complaint about this dish was the foie gras lacked some of the buttery richness I love in foie gras and instead tasted a bit gelatinous.

Along with the foie gras, we also split the Creamy Maine Lobster & Corn Soup ($12).

Creamy Maine Lobster and Corn Soup

The soup was presented first with only the lobster meat and avocado in an empty dish, and the waiter then poured the soup around the delicious claw meat at the center of the bowl. We ate up every last drop of the wonderfully rich soup.

My husband ordered the Roast Colorado Lamb Rack ($38) as his entree. Its accompaniments, from the menu, Porcinis, Sweet Bread Fricasee, Enriched Barley, Mint, Lamb Jus.

Roast Colorado Lamb Rack

This was an excellent plate. The lamb was perfectly seasoned and cooked to medium rare. The porcini mushrooms were chewy and flavorful, and the sweetbreads contributed an additional meaty flavor to the plate.

My entree was the Potato Crusted Halibut ($32), which came with, directly from the menu, Chanterelles, Creamed Spinach, Black Truffle, Port Reduction.

Potato Crusted Halibut

This was not nearly as spectacular as my husband's lamb. I loved the tiny chanterelle mushrooms (well, I love mushrooms in general) and the potato crust on the halibut was wonderfully crunchy and salty. The halibut itself, while well cooked, was a little bland. The giant pile of creamed spinach seemed more like diner food than an accompaniment at a high-end restaurant.

And of course, on to dessert.

Looking for something light, we chose the Raspberry and Basil Napoleon ($10).

Raspberry and Basil Napoleon

This simple dessert had a top layer of red raspberries and vanilla pastry cream, and a bottom layer of golden raspberries with raspberry pastry cream. On the side was lemon sorbet. The raspberries tasted very high quality and fresh, and the dessert overall was pleasantly light and refreshing.

Restaurant Kevin Taylor offered some excellent food but missed the mark in a few areas. It doesn't compare to our beloved Andre's at the Monte Carlo.

Worth a visit if its convenient and you're looking for a fine dining experience in Denver.




Fine Dining

7 of 10


Pros: Quality ingredients. Most dishes were excellent. Very good waitstaff.
Cons: Some dishes lacked polish for the price tag. Where are the other diners?

Website:
http://www.ktrg.net/rkt/