I do quite like French food, probably an echo of eating out on French holidays back in the 1970s and 1980s. Over the years I have had some really nice meals, some excellent meals, and some not so good.
I was in London for a few days working. One evening, for dinner, I decided to head out to Ealing. I parked in the shopping centre and had a look around. I saw the Amazon Fresh shop, the one where you walk in pick things up and walk out and everything is charged to your Amazon account. I didn’t go in.
I had a look around for somewhere to eat. I did consider getting some cheese and bread from M&S. I saw they did a smaller version of the French cheese platter I have had in Weston. However there was no bread left. I did think about Wagamama, but it looked very busy. In the end after some procrastination and a bit more exploring and walking around, I went to Côte Brasserie, a chain of French style restaurants.
They had some tables free and I was given a choice of where I could sit, so I had a nice small table by the window. It was a decent environment, comfortable, inviting.
I had checked out the menu earlier online, so was pretty much convinced about what I was going to have. I went with the fixed price menu.
There was a nice choice of starters, but I decided that I would go for the Tomates ‘Breton’. Brittany heritage tomatoes topped with pistou on toasted pain de campagne.
It looked amazing, I was really impressed with the presentation of the dish.
I wasn’t sure what pistou was so checked up on Wikipedia later.
Pistou, or pistou sauce, is a Provençal cold sauce made from cloves of garlic, fresh basil, and olive oil. It is somewhat similar to the Ligurian sauce pesto, although it lacks pine nuts.
It was a lovely plate of food, the bread was nice, the tomatoes were well seasoned and the pistou added a nice touch.
For my main course I had the steak frites – chargrilled steak with frites and garlic butter. I upgraded to the ribeye.
The dish came with some additional watercress, which was a nice touch.
The steak wasn’t fantastic, it lacked seasoning and wasn’t as tender as I thought it was going to be. Upon reflection I probably shouldn’t have upgraded.
Alongside I had a Meteor beer, which was fresh and smooth.
The service was excellent, warm, friendly and efficient.
This was my first experience of Côte Brasserie and I enjoyed the experience and the food.