Jean Louis Restaurant & Bar
136 Heber Ave., Park City ; 435-200-0260
(see
map)
Fab French chef, Jean-Louis Montecot, formerly of Goldener-Hirsch, goes out on his own with an eclectic menu.
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| Kid-friendly |
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Cuisine: Eclectic
Price: $$$
Hours: Open nightly, 5-9:30 p.m.
Liquor: Full Service
Corkage: $ 10
Reservations: Accepted
Accepts:    
Website: http://www.jeanlouisrestaurant.com
Recommended Dishes: Floating island, chocolate soufflé, roast chicken.
September 20, 2006
Take in the floating island at Jean Louis' worldly restaurant
By Mary Brown Malouf
PARK CITY -- My first impression of Jean-Louis Montecot's eponymous new restaurant in Park City was overwhelmingly positive -- I found a parking place less than a block from the door. What's not to love?
But as it turned out, the parking place was the most -- the only -- charming feature of the restaurant's physical layout. The entrance, on the first floor of a new multi-use building, is at the corner of Swede Alley and Heber Avenue. Would-be diners walk into the building atrium instead of the restaurant proper. And when the hostess asks if you'd like to eat outside, she's not talking al fresco. She means eating in a common area of the building, across from the entrance to a soon-to-open nail salon.
The answer was, um, no, and my companions and I didn't want to sit in the cramped and noisy restaurant, either. In the end, we opted for a narrow balcony that overlooks Swede Alley's traffic congestion and a municipal parking lot.
Obviously, we were a challenge to our server, who had to overcome our bad attitude about the ambience before he even took our drink order. But on both our visits to Jean Louis, the servers and the wine steward were so gracious and helpful that our disgruntlement mellowed. Our server offered knowledgeable and honest advice about food and solicitous service. And the sommelier has collected an unpretentious list of wines, surprisingly reasonable and diverse, clearly valuing customer satisfaction more than Wine Spectator awards, although we wished for a few more selections by the glass.
Jean Louis may not be the destination restaurant we had anticipated from this chef-owner's glowing reputation -- he was in charge of the star-bestowed, Gallic-inspired Goldener-Hirsch for several years. But for the most part I enjoyed my meals at the new place. I just couldn't love the place.
My favorite part of the menu was the floating island ($8). I'm beginning at the end by praising dessert first, but floating island is practically an endangered recipe and in this era of overwrought desserts, a refreshing sweet is a rarity. A cool vanilla custard, cooked just till it coats a spoon, heaped with clouds of cooked meringue drizzled with threads of caramel, floating island is beautifully ephemeral, just an evaporation of sweetness on the tongue. The French call it oeufs a la neige, eggs in the snow, and the taste is as pretty as the name.
Another lighter-than-air dessert, a hot chocolate soufflé ($12), was an equally fleeting mouthful of bliss, a pleasurable puff in contrast to today's leaden trend of molten chocolate cakes and turtle cheesecakes.
Backtracking to the beginning of the meal, I was slightly confused by the rest of Jean Louis's menu at first. It reads like a series of sidebars, with no main story to hold it together. What exactly is this restaurant about? One side of the menu features $15 burgers, stuffed with brie or ground bison -- and a list of pizzas with toppings like basic four-cheese ($10), roasted vegetable ($10) or mushroom-arugula ($11). Wood-fired? Wild yeast crust? Homegrown 'shrooms? What lifts these pizzas to a Jean Louis level of cuisine, I wondered. Nothing, really, our waiter replied. Never mind.
The other side of the menu is divided in two -- one section is titled "Entrees Tour de Monde," or "meals around the world," and features complete plates, entrees and sides, from Italy (scampi pappardelle, $28), Asia (halibut Asian style, $25), Africa (Moroccan tagine, $25, or $18 for a vegetarian version), South America (Peruvian escabeche, $24) and France (poulet en croute, $19). The lower half of the page is called "American Style"; from this, you choose your main dish and select a couple of side dishes from yet another list.
My dining companions and I decided to go global on our first visit. We split an appetizer of grainy hummus with store-bought pita bread, way overpriced at $6.50, then stayed in the southern latitudes with escabeche and tagine. The latter was served in the traditional ceramic dish, its conical top removed at the table so the wildly exotic scents washed out in a wave. The flavors followed in sinuous step -- spicy merguez, north African lamb sausage and sweet lamb chops perfumed with turmeric and cumin, on a base of simmered vegetables. All that was missing was starch to help absorb the juices.
The alleged escabeche ($24) sea bass was overmarinated, overcooked and oversalted, with little resemblance to any escabeche I've ever been served. Quinoa with vegetables was comfortably bland.
Over the course of two visits, we sampled all three soups (cup $6, bowl $8, sampler of three $9): ginger-squash, mushroom and watercress. All shared the same pudding-like consistency and pastel flavor, reminiscent of early '60s "continental" cuisine. The mushroom soup came in a cappuccino cup topped with frothed milk and dusted with Chinese five-spice, a clever presentation, but not enough to make the soup remarkable.
I had better luck with the American menu -- duck Belford, a house specialty ($31), featured rosy muscovy breast slices in a predictable but excellent berry sauce that merged nicely with a side of potatoes mashed with corn. The real star was the roast chicken ($25), a special, served on a long rectangular platter with heaps of roasted new potato quarters and a dish of snap-tender haricots verts (slender green beans).
The service and the soufflé would bring me back to Jean Louis if I happened to get hungry when I was in Park City. By and large, though, the setting had a depressing effect, indicative of all the things I don't like about the town. The "malling" of Park City is a story so common to many formerly charming mountain towns it hardly bears mentioning. Still, there ought to be more to destination dining than the dining.
Tribune's rating system
Overall rating
1 star Good
2 stars Very good
3 stars Excellent
4 stars Extraordinary
Entree price
$ Entree under $10
$$ $10-$18
$$$ $18-$25
$$$$ Above $25
Restaurant Noise
1 bell Quiet (under 65 decibles)
2 bells Can talk easily (65-70)
3 bells Talking somewhat difficult (70-75)
4 bells Raised voices (75-80)
A bomb Too noisy for normal conversation (80+)
The Tribune covers the cost of all meals at reviewed restaurants. Star ratings are based on a minimum of two visits. Ratings are updated continually based on at least one revisit. There is no connection between reviews and advertising.
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