If you’re fed up with restaurants so expensive that it takes as long to pay off the credit card bill as it did to get the reservation, with waiters so solemn you worry you’re being served a ritual sacrifice, and with places so full of suburbanites celebrating special occasions you feel like you’ve crashed a party in Schaumburg, you may have recently dined at a place like Gordon. I did–with a group who’d been going there since it first opened, a group celebrating a very special occasion, a group with a 7:30 PM reservation. We were seated at 8:10, received our minuscule appetizers at 9:15, our Lilliputian entrees at 10:20, and our dessert and coffee at 10:50. Except for the signature artichoke fritters with bearnaise sauce and the warm chocolate souffle cake, the food was uniformly mediocre. Admittedly, the waitress was anything but solemn. In fact, her mounting hysteria was the only source of satisfaction in an otherwise ruined evening.
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It’s experiences like this that turn people on to the lower prices, casual family atmosphere, and cheerfully prompt but relaxed service of a bistro. No one’s sure just what the origin of the term “bistro” is. It could be from the Russian word for “quick” used by the Cossacks to get fast service at bars during the Russian occupation of Paris in 1815 (one would have thought their guns would do the trick). Or from the French word bistreau, which means cowherd and, by insulting extension, innkeeper. Or from bistrouille, a mixture of coffee and brandy. In Lyon, the town Gourmet magazine refers to as “the French capital of gourmandise,” a bistro is called a bouchon, or cork.
Among the excellent appetizer choices are a golden, lightly spiced cold curried cream of cucumber soup ($3), as good as any I’ve had in France; a delectable caramelized onion-and-leek tart ($4) with a marvelous crust; and a silken chicken liver mousse ($5) studded with truffles. The chilled shrimp with citrus and olive oil ($5) was a bit too bland.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/J. Alexander Newberry.
