You know who I bet really likes Chateau West?
Your mother.
I don't know your mother, but here's what I do know: The vast majority of Scene readers are between ages 25 and 54, while the vast majority of babies in the U.S. are born to women between ages 20 and 34. Those statistics lead us to the strong probability that your mom is somewhere between 45 and 88 years old.
Now let's assume Mom experienced her first true fancy-pants restaurant meal when she was, say, 10 years old — in other words, at least 35 years ago. We're talking pre-1980. Back then, fancy food was practically synonymous with French cuisine. Remember back when we used the word gourmet? Remember Julian's on West End Avenue?
All that is to say your mom — if she's lucky — has a tender nostalgia for la cuisine française, for a menu dotted with accents, and for plates ladled with stocks and sauces. Which leads us to the conclusion that your maternal unit will enjoy a certain remembrance of things past upon entering Chateau West's lovely dining room, with its soaring beamed ceilings, white tablecloths, Cole Porter soundtrack, and tall vases of fresh flowers. And it will only deepen as she peruses the leatherbound roster of foie gras, escargots, steak tartare, salade Niçoise, quiche, omelets, clafoutis, crème brûlée and France-focused wines.
You know who else really likes Chateau West?
Me.
By the math above, I am not old enough to be your mother, but I do know a well-executed menu when I find one. And while the plates coming out of Chateau West's kitchen may not break new ground in style or substance — there's no claim of ferme à table here — they do convey fluency in the venerable tradition on offer.
Chef Alain Treville comes by his culinary point of view naturally. Born in France's Bordeaux region, he left the kitchens of Paris to work at Atlanta's Four Seasons, married an American and returned to Paris. In August, Treville and his wife moved to Nashville, where he teamed up with Anatolia restaurant owner Huseyin Ustankaya to recast a former pancake-house-turned-Asian-eatery into a French bistro.
The transformation to Chateau West, which debuted in February, is a success.
Look no further than the staple French onion soup for evidence of deft and deliberate hands at work. Glistening broth leaned more toward golden than toward dark-brown, and the sweetness of caramelized onions peeked through layered flavors of beef, root vegetables, tomatoes and herbs. At last — a soup whose dominant note was not salt! If only the bowl had been larger or the hunk of cheese-draped toast had been smaller, to make room for more of this delicate elixir.
A similar subtlety infused the stock in the bowl of Prince Edward Island mussels, though this vegetable-and-wine based version was lighter in both color and flavor so as not to eclipse the seafood's natural liquor.
Ratatouille, often a molten mash of tomatoes and eggplant, was a precise medley of cubed eggplant and zucchini, onion, red and yellow peppers — no tomatoes — with each element sautéed separately and drained to preserve the integrity of the distinct flavors. (This dish was far preferable to the unseasonal and insipid side of pink tomatoes roasted with herbes de Provence.)
Foie gras arrived in a spare presentation with a cross-section of terrine and slices of grilled housemade baguette. The complexity of each custardy schmear helps explain how such a controversial preparation of fattened duck liver persists as a delicacy. We were slightly sheepish about how much we enjoyed it.
Duck Chambord was a beautiful plating of sliced breast over boiled-and-skinned potatoes sautéed in duck fat and butter with parsley and garlic. The combination was drizzled with ruby-hued gastrique made with duck stock, shallots and raspberry liqueur and finished with fresh berries.
Beef Bourguignon was both rustic and refined, with peeled Yukon Gold potatoes lolling in the wine-laced stew of tender beef and molten carrots, as if balanced to stay pristine until presentation at the table.
Speaking of presentation, a flair for the dramatic accents a meal at Chateau West, where candlelit cauldrons bubble with molten brie, honey and truffle oil for dipping airy profiteroles, strawberries balance precariously on towers of pastry and cream, and a server debones and reassembles the grilled loup de mer (aka sea bass) tableside, with the dexterity of a surgeon.
That said, our experiences were not flawless. On one visit, there was no bread. Our server promised to bring a loaf as soon as it finished cooking, but it never materialized. There was a certain incongruity in watching a gentleman prepare our fish while a television flickered over his shoulder. Three times, the wrong plates arrived at our table, always with a dramatic reveal followed by an awkward apology. On the bright side, those snafus offered us previews of dishes we might not have seen otherwise. We would never have thought to order quiche in lieu of lamb or rabbit gnocchi, but after seeing the two-inch-high wedges of fluffy egg riddled with vegetables, we'll reconsider on future visits.
Also on future visits, we look forward to sampling the crème brûlée. A diner nearby ordered the large oval crock, and I could not take my eyes off the glazed and glorious caramel, even as I devoured a trio of ice-cream stuffed profiteroles bathed in rich warm chocolate.
Meanwhile, I couldn't help noticing something else about that fellow diner: He wore a blazer. In fact, a significant number of the men in the room wore blazers or suits. Not a skinny jean in the joint. For what it's worth, those jacketed men were dining with women who looked to be between ages 45 and 88. When one of them inevitably recommends you try Chateau West, you ought to take her up on the suggestion. After all, Mother knows best.
Email arts@nashvillescene.com.
