Cremant

On my birthday, Siv took me to Cremant (pronounced- Kray-Mahn), a famed French Bistro in Madrona that we have been planning to try for a while. Cremant is an unpretentious bistro serving traditional French fare in good sized portions. It is not your typical fine dining French restaurant, where you will have umpteen courses of tiny plates; not that I don’t enjoy that experience. The food tasted very authentic French, not fusionized for the American palettes.

The decor is casual, the walls and the furniture are done in gray and white. I guess the idea is for the food and the crowd to add color to the palette, which it did. The staff was overly friendly, not the pretentious kind that we have ran into at many a French restaurant. The place was packed, and the crowd was very noisy. Since our idea of romance is not the candle-lit corner table, we both love crowded places, we were fine. The tables were a bit too close, which was just a small annoyance. We could hear our neighbors loud and clear, and we couldn’t help but notice that they were out-of-towners. So apparently this is where the in-the-know foodie tourists go to dine in Seattle, not everyone sticks with the Pike Place Market restaurants which is good to know.

The menu had quite a good selection. The wine list was nice and had some very affordable wines starting from around $30. We went for a bottle of mid-range Bordeaux, which was a great choice. As for food, I started with a frisee salad with thick chunks of bacon topped with a poached egg ($12), totally crunchy and delicious. Siv went for the onion soup ($12) topped with melted Gruyere, he loved it, but it was a bit too big for one person. I am not a big fan of French onion soup. He could only finish half of it, I think it is meant to be shared.

There were a lot of selections for the first course, but as soon as we spotted the Roasted Marrow Bones ($12) in the menu, we both knew we had to go for it. We love our bone marrow! The menu specifically mentioned that it will take about 20 minutes to prepare, so we ordered this along with our soup and the salad and by the time we finished those, these beauties arrived. These well roasted marrows came with a side of sea salt, some toasted bread and a silver spoon to help scoop it out. I don’t even know how to describe the taste of the roasted marrows… Scoop it out, add some salt, spread it on the toast and it is better than butter! Absolutely fantastic…

 

For the main course I ordered the Braised Lamb Shank ($24) that was served on top of a lentil and walnut stew. I love lamb, and this was perfectly braised, just what you would expect from a French bistro like this. The portion was huge, but what else would you expect when you order lamb shank, right? I did manage to polish off most of it.

Siv went for the special of the night, a Roasted Striped Sea bass ($26) served with green pesto and a layered potato lasagna. This was really the right size portion, unlike my humongous lamb shank, and he thoroughly enjoyed it. Great flavor combination, even though I am not a big fan of lasagna, I enjoyed the bites of fish I tried.

We were too full for desserts by this time, and just ordered coffee to finish off the meal. The coffee came in a cute french press carafe, brewing right on our table, and they gave us these small wrapped chocolate pieces, always a nice touch.

The dinner was perfect! Food was excellent, service was great, and the price wasn’t bad either! If you are looking for an authentic French bistro style meal without putting a big dent in your wallet, Cremant is worth a try.

http://www.cremantseattle.com 

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Category: French, Madison Park/Madrona