The Nature of the Bistro: Café Rouge
Written: Feb 22 '06 (Updated Dec 08 '07)
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Pros: Clean food
Cons: Loud when it's full
The Bottom Line: It's nice to know that Berkeley has a restaurant where one can dine on good, clean meat, prepared well, served professionally, and priced fairly.
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| lyagushka's Full Review: Cafe Rouge |
Café Rouge is a relatively new addition to the gentrified Fourth Street neighborhood in west Berkeley. The restaurant opened while we were living in Belgium, so it was something new for me to discover when we moved back to the bay area. I suppose that a neighborhood which is now so thoroughly dedicated to relieving the pressure on the swollen wallets of recreational shoppers would inevitably attract a restaurant as polished as this one. Fortunately, because the population of Berkeley actually knows culinary shinola when it tastes it, the quality of the food here is high. It likely wouldn't have survived if it were otherwise.
The ambiance is somewhat hip and stylized here, but it's not totally over the top. The restaurant has one large dining room with a long bar on the first floor, and a smaller dining room upstairs. During clement weather there is also outdoor seating for lunch. The volume at the restaurant is significant at most times and fairly loud when the restaurant is fully packed. But even at such times, it's possible to have a conversation without having to speak loudly enough to risk going hoarse.
The first time I ate at Café Rouge was with a group of women friends. There were six of us, so we made a reservation, though it wasn't a particularly busy time. It was a Wednesday, which is $1 oyster night. This wasn't important to me, because I don't eat much shellfish. (I've always wondered about the very first person to pry open an oyster shell, look at the oyster and say, "Mmmm, I'm gonna eat that!") But a couple of my friends were enthusiastic about oysters and so they shared a moderate platter of them.
I knew that Café Rouge is known for its meats, and the menu is obviously built around high-quality meats of various types. But I just wasn't in the mood for meat on my first visit, so I ordered a light salad and a fettuccine dish with cavolo nero and brussels sprouts. I ordered this with just a little trepidation. In general, I love crucifers, but I've never really enjoyed brussels sprouts. I figured that a place as upscale as Café Rouge would work out some way of presenting this vegetable to make it palatable. I also figured it would be a good test of the kitchen: Could a meat restaurant serve forth a properly cooked pasta and vegetable dish worth eating? And they did! Had they not, I likely wouldn't have gone back, or at most only when I was in a thoroughly carnivorous mood. I liked the food I had that night very much. I was especially interested in the tuna tartare appetizer that one of my friends ordered. I would have liked to try it, but she was getting over a cold, so she didn't offer to share with any of us. We split the tab, which included a bottle of wine for the table and an automatically added gratuity of 18% (parties of six or more), evenly between the six of us. I believe it came to about $27 per person, with most of us having an appetizer and main course, but I can't say what my individual choices would have cost otherwise.
My second visit to Café Rouge happened because I needed a quick meal and the Mexican restaurant next door, where I'd planned to eat, was closed. I slipped into the restaurant around 5pm, before they were seating at tables, and took a place at the bar. With only a limited time to order and eat, I decided before I sat down that I'd just have a hamburger. One of the women I'd eaten with earlier had ordered a burger and had said that it was really tasty. So I ordered that without even looking at the menu. The bartender asked if I wanted to add a number of different options to the burger and I agreed to add grilled onions and cheddar cheese.
As I settled back to wait for my food, other people wandered in and sat at the bar. It was a slow period at Café Rouge, when the staff seemed to be gearing up for the dinner shift. It took about 20 minutes for my burger to show up, and I was a little nervous about the wait as my mealtime was limited. I can excuse this though as the restaurant wasn't really serving dinner at that point. No doubt the kitchen had a lot of prep work to be doing, other than attending to my order.
I'd asked for the burger medium-rare, because I like it that way, because I figured it would shave a few minutes off the preparation time, and because most restaurants overcook burgers and give the customer a medium-cooked piece of meat whenever medium-rare is asked for. In this case, I'm happy to report, my burger was actually medium-rare. It was a big patty, served on a kaiser roll, and accompanied by a big pile of thin, irregularly cut french fries. Before my plate arrived the bartender asked whether I wanted ketchup or mustard. I declined both, but asked for some mayonnaise for my fries. (Nearly four years residence in Belgium does have some consequence.) I was very pleased by the flavor of the beef, and didn't even regret the lack of a salt cellar at the bar. The patty to bun ratio became a little problematic as I ate, but this is nothing exceptional with burgers and breadstuffs whose design parameters are not carefully engineered to one another in some infernal boardroom. The fries were good enough that I ate more of them than I intended, despite the nearly flavorless mayo. My cheeseburger and fries were priced at $12 before tax and tip. A bit pricey, perhaps, but not every burger is made with Niman Ranch beef ground in house. I was happy with the meal.
Shortly thereafter, I brought my husband there for lunch on the spur of the moment. He was impressed with my talk of the restaurant's hamburger, and he had a jonesing for one himself. He had the burger, with predictably satisfactory results, and I had a nice tri-tip roast beef sandwich with a small green side salad.
The fourth meal I ate at Café Rouge was Valentine's Day dinner with my husband. We ordered two appetizers, one main course with a side of grilled asparagus, and shared everything. We began with a salad of mixed greens and herbs, and a puff pastry tart with sautéed leeks, crumbly-soft goat cheese and slices of pale pink baby beets. The greens were exceptionally clean and highlighted nicely by some herbs such as fennel and parsley. The tart was very tasty - a nice use of puff pastry and an unusual but complementary set of flavors. For our main course we split a Niman Ranch T-bone steak, ordered medium-rare. It was absolutely superb. I eat a steak, on average, less than once a year. But if they were all as good as the one we had at Café Rouge, that would probably change. For $32, we got plenty of steak, accompanied by an abundance of those yummy french fries. It was also served with some sautéed ring-cut red onions. The onions tasted good, but I didn't think they particularly complemented the steak. Our side of grilled asparagus was a little small for $6, in my opinion, but they tasted very good. The tab for this meal, with three glasses of red wine, came to $87.55 before tip.
Looking over the menu I brought back from our Valentine's Day dinner, there are fewer full-bore meat dishes than I would have expected. The six main courses include a pappardelle Bolognese, roasted chicken, a braised duck leg, pork schnitzel, grilled tuna and the steak we ordered. So all the main courses have meat, but there's really only one preparation for each type of meat. I suppose a fine meal could be fashioned out of the four salads, six appetizers, and four vegetarian sides. Prices for salads range from $7-9, for appetizers from $6.50-12, and for main courses from $17-32. I think these prices are fair for the quality of ingredients and preparation, the high level of service and the pleasant ambiance. The prices certainly offer no great bargains, but neither are they excessive.
In all cases I was happy with the service at Café Rouge, even when sitting at the bar before dinner service began. The waitstaff did their work professionally and efficiently, giving me no cause for complaint. Service was noticeably more formal during my dinners at a table as compared to lunches at the bar, but that's nothing too surprising. Our table was crumbed after we finished our dinner, before they brought the dessert menus without even finding out if we were interested.
I would recommend Café Rouge for a special occasion dinner or lunch. It's not cheap enough that I could afford to eat there all the time, but I think it's a fair value for the money. I'll certainly return the next time I'm craving a steak or a burger.
I can also recommend a meal at these restaurants:
East Bay
• A Coté - lively pan-Mediterranean tapas in a sleek but fun atmosphere
• Cha-ya - vegetarian Japanese restaurant in the Gourmet Ghetto
• Chez Panisse Café - Alice Waters' sumptuous fare at about half the price
• Lalime's - superb New American fare in an intimate setting
• Manpuku - a cheap and simple ramen bar in the Elmwood
• Nan Yang - fantastic Burmese in north Rockridge
• Oliveto - exquisite Italian in Rockridge
• Pho 84 - paradigm-shifting (really!) Vietnamese in downtown Oakland
• Rick & Ann's and La Note - both offer excellent choices for breakfast
• Shen Hua - great Chinese in Berkeley's Elmwood neighborhood
San Francisco
• Boulevard - hands down, the best restaurant in San Francisco
• Woodward's Garden, which is almost as good as Boulevard
• Betelnut - highly recommended for a fun night with a group
• Helmand - little known but excellent Afghan place and a great value
• Suppenkuche - unpretentious German bierhaus charm in Hayes Valley
On the other hand, I can't recommend Café Cacao, which is part of the Scharffen Berger chocolate empire, nor Pizzaiolo which features pretentious, outrageously priced pizza served by hipper-than-thou servers.
Recommended:
Yes
Kid Friendliness: No
Vegetarian Friendly: No
Notes, Tips or Menu Recommendations Meat, meat, meat, and more meat. Actually, they do vegetable dishes pretty well, too. But leave the vegetarians at home.
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