In a town with a famous and ever expanding food scene, it is rare to see something truly unique. Until recently, traditional French/Provencal-style cuisine has been particularly hard to find. There are a handful of establishments that may dabble from time to time (I’m told that Left Bank has cracked open their Larousse Gastronomique and put out a popular tartare, and there's the Rue Franklin), but there aren’t many that fully commit to French cuisine. As I’ve mentioned before, I have an affinity for traditional French cooking, so I was very excited to hear about Raclettes and their efforts to bring the casual Parisienne dining experience to the Queen City.
Beyond the rarified air of French dining, Raclettes has gone a step further to introduce Buffalo to something entirely new and placed it right in their namesake: the raclette dinner. Raclette is a type of semi-hard cheese found in France and Switzerland that has come to be used in a unique dinner preparation of the same name. In the raclette dinner, a large piece of raclette cheese is heated table-side while other ingredients are cooked on a small tabletop grill. The heated, softened portion of the cheese is then scraped onto pieces of bread or crepes and eaten along with the freshly grilled accompaniments. In fact, the word ‘raclette’ is a mutation of the French word ‘racler’, which means ‘to scrape’. Like fondue, the raclette dinner is a bit cumbersome, but it is more about the novel experience than the resulting plate of food. My dining companions, who had previously had raclette meals in Switzerland, said that this Buffalo version loses a bit in translation, but that the spirit of the experience is well intentioned.
Raclettes seem to be trying to serve several masters. They offer traditional dinner service, complete with online reservation booking. They have take away options during the business day for the downtown lunch hour crowd. And they also serve a brunch menu on Sundays. However, this multi-faceted aspect of their establishment can be both a blessing and a curse. I’ve been to Raclettes several times over the last few months to sample from each of these menus and provide a holistic summary of their offerings.
On the food front, the take away lunch might be the easiest place to start. Several pre-made sandwiches, salads, and drinks are stacked in a small reach-in cooler by their front door. Items range from $5 to $8. I recommend the Rosette de Lyon sandwich and a salade maison. The Rosette de Lyon is a type of salami which, on this sandwich, is topped with Dijon mustard and emmental cheese (akin to Swiss), all on a baguette. The salade maison is a straight forward garden salad with French dressing (not the bright red stuff on your grandmother’s dinner table, actual vinegar-based classic French dressing), but I like it as a fresh counterpoint to the heartiness of the Rosette sandwich. Sadly though, Raclettes’ website would have us believe that the take away lunch is discontinued for the winter; a shame. If only I, and the thousands of other people working downtown, could suspend our need for lunch for six months out of the year, we’d all be on the same page.
Let’s move on to dinner. I’ve had dinner at Raclettes three times now, and each time has been a very different experience; unfortunately, when it comes to restaurants, that’s not really a good thing. My first dinner visit was by far the best. I had the cassoulet (which is only available on Fridays and Saturdays during the winter, and in the summer is replaced by a rotating selection of fish served en papillote). Cassoulet is a type of white bean stew containing duck confit, lamb, and sausage. It is, to be quite fair, a labor intensive dish to make, involving several preparatory steps made a day in advance of cooking. For this reason, it is the one dish on Raclettes’ menu that I have not made for myself at home. Raclettes’ cassoulet was absolutely phenomenal, and I enjoyed each bite better than the last. It has been by far the single greatest dish that I’ve had in my several visits to the restaurant. The Raclettes cassoulet is served for two, and as such, clocks in on the pricey side at $50 per portion. So, if you’re so inclined, hold hands with a buddy for this one, and split the check.
My third and most recent dinner experience at Raclettes was the least successful. First, it was during Restaurant Week and I discovered that the cassoulet was not available. To their credit, it was the only menu item to be 86’ed for Restaurant Week. A bit disappointing, but those are the breaks sometimes, no big deal. I instead ordered the coq au vin, a stew of bone-in chicken and vegetables braised in white wine, and my dining companion ordered the boeuf bourguignon, beef braised in red wine with vegetables. When I cook either coq au vin, or boeuf bourguignon at home, it is an all day affair. Everything cooks low and slow in wine and water until fork tender, so I can understand how that can be a logistical challenge in a professional kitchen. You need to make enough so that you don’t run out, but you don’t want to make too much and waste it, and it’s not the type of thing that the chef can just whip up if it’s a hot seller on any given night. It’s tricky, I get it. That’s why I’m not a restaurant chef. That being said, when our food was served, the meats were very dry and bordered on tough. Clearly, this was the result of the kitchen trying to cook the coq au vin and bourguignon on a higher heat for a shorter period, probably to keep up with a full Restaurant Week dining room. It’s an unfortunate quality control issue that had a very noticeable effect on the delivered product. It happens, and I understand the context in which it happened, but I was disappointed nonetheless.
Finally: brunch service. I went with three friends on a bright Sunday morning to round all the bases. Bruch was one of the better meals I’ve had at Raclettes, not quite to the level of the cassoulet, but definitely one of their strengths. We began with several small presses of fresh coffee and a bread basket for the table ($7). The bread basket included croissants, baguettes and brioche rolls with marmalade, preserves and butter. This simple starter of fresh breads and jellies with coffee might be the most authentic experience I’ve had at Raclettes, and by that I mean it reminded me the most of the time I spent in France. It was very evocative of sitting at a café, reading a copy of Le Monde, and enjoying bread and coffee while the world walked by. I ordered the croissant French toast ($12), a sliced croissant battered in egg and lightly fried, topped with whipped cream, blueberries and strawberries. My dining companions ordered the smoked fish platter ($16) and the Croque Madame ($13) (just like the Croque Monsieur, but with a fried egg on top). All of which was perfectly enjoyable and prepared well. One of my dining companions was a bit disappointed by the fact that her Croque Madame was served on regular sliced bread, especially noticeable after such a strong bread basket. It would have been nothing to have served the Madame on a baguette or even the brioche. And logistical issues reared their ugly head again when I asked the server what the weekly special quiche was; they had run out of quiche for the day. It should be noted that we were seated a half hour after the restaurant opened, and the brunch menu consists of only 11 items. Therefore, there is no good reason for anything to be off the menu at that point in the day.
The bottom line here is that there are lots of things that Raclettes is doing right, but there is still room for improvement. The menu is a bit of a moving target, which is frustrating, and there is the real possibility of fundamental errors on the plate when food arrives at the table. At the end of the day, I’m left with the impression that the proprietors of Raclettes are passionate about French cuisine and French culture, but not as well versed in the logistics of running a professional kitchen and producing at the level to which they aspire. When they get it right, it is an absolute homerun, but the critically important thing that separates a restaurant chef from an adventurous home cook is the ability to deliver consistently at a high level. Some of these issues can be attributed to the fact that it was Restaurant Week, but that is why I am not basing this criticism on just one dinner visit. I don’t say any of this to discourage anyone from trying Raclettes, but rather to provide an opportunity for the restaurant to adjust. Any of the issues laid out here are quickly and easily corrected, and I hope they are taken as constructive. I still plan to check in with Raclettes from time to time, because I genuinely do want them to tighten the screws and offer the kind of dining that I know they want to offer and that I very much want to support.
Who: Raclettes
What: Parisienne-Style French cuisine
Cost: $$ - $$$
Where: 537 Main Street, Buffalo, NY 14203
Phone: 716.436.3244
Web: www.raclettesbuffalo.com
