French provincial cuisine is not Parisian haute cuisine. You won’t find nutritious stews or coarsely chopped herbs on the table in Versailles. However, you will find many of them on the website Lalande. Lallande, run by the owners of Bloom Bake Shop, was inspired by Annemarie Maitri’s French heritage and the time her husband, Mark Pavlovich, spent in Germany. This cuisine clearly doesn’t want you to think of “provincial” as anything close to tedious or elementary.
Take monkfish bourride, for example. A generous piece of monkfish sits in a refreshing broth along with shrimp and potatoes. A slice of crusty bread smeared with aioli is placed on top, satisfying the need to dip something, anything, into the bowl.
It’s a lovely, intricate dish, but not as conventionally pretty as other, more carefully plated dishes, let alone the homely charm of the monkfish itself. She may not be a supermodel, but she is delicious.
The chicken fricassee was similarly served, tender chicken with carrots, onions and a sprinkling of herbs, with a few pieces of baguette placed in the opulent broth. Although it has already disappeared from the menu, it shows how delicately Lallande spices his dishes. I suspect relatively little salt is added; dishes embrace their component parts and draw depth of flavor from each intentional addition.
Portion sizes also seem organic at Lallande. Almost nothing felt under- or over-sized, not the deceptively voluminous glass of intensely red beetroot soup or the relatively unadorned leeks in the vinaigrette. The former sang of the vivid flavor of beets (pleasant even to me, who doesn’t like beets), and the latter turned what might be a woody, stringy vegetable into a translucent, exquisite bite, at once pointed and brilliant.
The menu is divided into just a few sections: pain, frigid cuts, fromage, common garden, pasture and sea (appetizers) and dessert.
If you want to immerse yourself in comfortable Frenchness, try the mousse de foie from the extensive charcuterie section. A liver-based mousse with something sweet or tart is a sophisticated bar snack that I always reach for. Or opt for a pear tart and a cocktail if you only have time to sneak to the bar. Equally a winner is the caramelized sugar tarts with the accompanying cinnamon-cardamom ice cream.
The croque monsieur is another bite to be enjoyed at the diminutive bar overlooking Lallande’s bustling kitchen. More power to the gentleman next to me who, improbably, managed to eat it by hand without making an unholy concoction of ham, béchamel and melty Gruyère, but it’s a opulent and savory experience worth any knife-and-fork work.
The woodsy, forest atmosphere of Bistro Vert steak sauce gives the impression that we are even leaving the French countryside, and the murky roasted whole Brussels sprouts with hot bacon dressing confirms: this is the cuisine of Alsace and Lorraine, as much German as it is French.
Tarte flambée is more or less a flatbread pizza, but with more of a stone hearth than a brick oven. Asian and Middle Eastern references in the seasonal variety with black futsu pumpkin, kale and sumac crossed even more borders than the German-French ones. Seeing the generous crust being hand-formed as we ordered was worth sitting at the bar.
It’s not all rustic preparations either. The classic tradition appears with the opulent preparation of scallops a la coquille St. Jacques. Large, tender scallops with plenty of cream sauce and buttery breadcrumbs are the caloric joy you’d expect from them. A few of the scallops were a little sandy, but that didn’t bother me.
I would appreciate being informed that the Honey-Walnut Roasted Squash will be accompanied by an otherwise unannounced side of fall salad before I order the entire fall salad. It turned out that the salad was the only dish that provided significantly more food than necessary. It was a great salad though, and the squash was full of cherries, spiced pine nuts, and spinach – in other words, no shortage of flavors. It’s difficult to complain about that.
Half a dozen cheeses to choose from, served with honey, seasonal fruit and homemade crackers. You’ll have plenty of them, too, by choosing the chef’s option: three cheeses and toppings. And bless the French for legitimizing cheese for dessert. O’Banon dessert cheese includes a swirling compote (in our case it was crab apple) to balance the creamy goat cheese. All our meals ended with complimentary Bloom French sablé cookies.
This cozy dining room quickly fills up with reservations and content walk-ins. Monroe Street – with Lallande, the sleek novel One & Only storefront and Fairchild’s recent James Beard Award – is clearly having a moment.
Lalande
1859, Monroe Street
608-733-9150; lallandemadison.com
16:00-22:00 Wed-Sat.
$7-42
