Audio By Carbonatix
A truly authentic ethnic restaurant can be like an acid flashback — a good one, that is: A diluted but still evocative sensory return to a foreign country you once visited. When the visuals and sounds, as well as the smells and tastes, are vivid enough, it’s almost a mini vacation abroad, all for the price of a meal and a gallon of gas.
The nine-month-old French Box Café, whose specialty is Breton crêpes, is that kind of ethnic eatery. But it’s also a jewel box of a neighborhood restaurant, modestly priced (though not quite so modest as when it first opened) and very much of a piece with its stylishly international Design District locale. If I’d been magically plopped inside, instead of having taken the unatmospheric fifteen-minute walk from my home, I’d have had a hard time deciding whether I was a block from Biscayne Boulevard or from le Boul’Mich’.
Ambiance is casually artsy, with modish fashion-magazine sketches of women’s heads on the blue walls, and furniture (including two comfortable booths) decorated in a wry black-and-white faux Holstein cowhide pattern. Sounds, on a couple of recent visits, were trs Francais — a good sign in that the main language spoken by both staff and patrons was French, though not so good in terms of the place’s music. Whatever gave the French the idea they could play rock and roll? And why encourage such lunacy, when Breton/Celtic background music would be more atmospheric?
Still it’s hard to feel anything but festive in the presence of gregarious chef-owner Marilu Bergeron, a ceramicist who owned a crêperie in Lyons before moving to Miami, especially when all wines are $18. The last time I encountered a bottle of Louis Eschenauer sauvignon blanc (light and dry, but with a pleasant hint of berries) in a restaurant it was a good ten bucks more, and Bergeron explained that the four wines she carries do cost her different prices. “But I charge always $18 anyway, because it makes the books simpler.”
Diners can also keep it easy with a $25 formule (up from $19.99) that includes a choice of any of the menu’s salads, any galette (savory crêpe), and any dessert crêpe. This is a good deal for diners who can manage a good deal of food — both salads and crêpes are sizable — and desire higher-ticket items. Order a Norwegian salad (mesclun, mushrooms, tomatoes, and smoked salmon) and a galette of shrimp flambéed with rum, ginger, and garlic, followed by a crêpe Belle Helene (pear, chocolate, almonds, and vanilla ice cream) and the prix fixe will save you more than enough for an additional glass of wine (four dollars).
Budgeters can put together a more basic three-course meal for under $15, ordering à la carte, since the cheapest salad and galette are both only $5.95, and dessert crêpes start at $3.50. Since the least expensive salad is a mix of good mesclun with mediocre ham and cheese, however, I’d strongly recommend springing for a salad Margaux ($7.95) — the same beautifully dressed fresh baby greens with pears, walnuts, and blue cheese.
Some of the simpler crêpes were actually terrific, like a lemon-and-sugar dessert crêpe ($3.95). The delicate pancake was moist in the center, crinkly along the edges, and admirably, the citrus syrup (studded with little bits of lemon zest) was not too sweet. And “Le Complete” ($7.50) was as good a version of this classic savory ham-cheese-mushroom-egg galette as any I’ve had in Brittany, crêpe central since roughly the Fifteenth Century.
Bretons traditionally serve savory fillings in buckwheat crêpes. Some American fast-food chains claim to do so as well, but the French Box’s carbonara galette demonstrated that the real thing is quite different. As wafer thin as the white-flour dessert crêpe had been, the nutty-tasting galette, cut into strips to resemble flat noodles, had enough substance to stand up to a hefty bacon-egg-onion cream sauce while remaining unsoggy — part tender, part crunchy lace. Vive la différence.
