Kyle Nabilcy
A tarte flambee, which looks like a flatbread pizza, on a wooden serving platter.
The tarte flambée gives a stone hearth vibe.
French provincial cuisine is not Parisian haute cuisine. You wouldn’t have found hearty stews or rough-chopped herbs on the table at Versailles. You will, however, find a lot of both at Lallande. Run by the owners of Bloom Bake Shop, Lallande was inspired by Annemarie Maitri’s French heritage and time her husband, Mark Pavlovich, spent in Germany. This kitchen clearly doesn’t want you to think of “provincial” as anything close to dull or simple.
Take, for example, the monkfish bourride. A generous cut of monkfish sits in an invigorating broth alongside shrimp and fingerling potatoes. A slice of crisp bread slathered in aioli is laid atop, and satisfies the urge to dunk something, anything, into the bowl.
It’s a lovely, complex dish, just not as conventionally pretty as other, more fastidiously plated dishes, and that’s to say nothing of the homey charms of the monkfish itself. It’s not a supermodel fish, but it is delicious.
Chicken fricassee came similarly presented, tender chicken with carrot, onion, and a scattering of herbs, with a couple chunks of baguette set into the rich broth. Though it has currently exited the menu, it demonstrates how delicately Lallande seasons its dishes. I suspect there is relatively little added salt; the dishes embrace their component parts and draw depth of flavor from every purposeful addition.
Portion size feels organic at Lallande, too. Almost nothing felt under or oversized, not the deceptively voluminous little chalice of vividly red beet soup, not the relatively unadorned leeks in vinaigrette. The former sang with vibrant beet flavor (pleasing even to my non-beet-loving self) and the latter turned what can be a woody, stringy vegetable into a translucent, delicate bite, at once pungent and bright.
The menu is divided into just a few sections: pain, charcuterie, fromage, communal garden, pasture and sea (the entrees), and dessert.
If you want to sink into comfortable French-ness, try the mousse de foie from the ample charcuterie section. A liver-based mousse with something either sweet or tart is a gussied-up bar snack I’ll always turn to. Or opt for the pear tarte tatin and a cocktail, if you have time only to sneak into a bar seat. The caramelized sugar of the tarte with the accompanying cinnamon cardamom ice cream is equally a winner.
The croque monsieur is another bite that feels at home at the small bar overlooking Lallande’s buzzing kitchen. More power to the gentleman next to me who managed, improbably, to eat it by hand without making an ungodly mess of ham, béchamel and melty gruyère, but it’s a rich and savory experience worth every bit of work with knife and fork.
The woodsy, forest-floor vibes of the bistro steak’s sauce vert gives the impression that we’re leaving even the French countryside, and darkly roasted whole brussels sprouts with hot bacon dressing confirm: this is Alsace-Lorraine cuisine, as much German as it is French.
Tarte flambée is more or less a flatbread pizza, but giving more stone hearth than brick oven. The Asian and Middle Eastern references in a seasonal variation with black futsu squash, kale and sumac crossed even more borders than the German/French one. Watching its hearty crust formed by hand as we ordered it was worth the bar seat.
It’s not all rustic preparations, either. Classic tradition arrives with the rich preparation of scallops a la coquille St. Jacques. Big, tender scallops with ample cream sauce and buttery bread crumbs are every bit the caloric joy you’d expect them to be. A couple of scallops were a bit sandy, but that was hardly a deal-breaker.
I would have appreciated a heads-up that the roasted honey nut squash would be accompanied by an otherwise-unannounced portion of the autumn salad before I ordered a whole autumn salad on its own. The salad, it turned out, was the one dish that delivered far more food than necessary. It was a great salad, though, and the squash was loaded with cherries, seasoned pine nuts, spinach — no shortage of flavors, in other words. Hard to complain about that.
There are a half-dozen cheeses to choose from, served with honey, seasonal fruits and house crackers. You’ll get plenty, too, with the chef’s selection option: three cheeses plus the accompaniments. And bless the French for legitimizing cheese for dessert. The O’Banon dessert cheese includes a rotating compote (ours was crabapple) to balance the creamy goat cheese. All our meals ended with complimentary French sablé cookies from Bloom.
This cozy dining room fills up quickly with reservations and lucky walk-ins. Monroe Street — with Lallande, the spiffy new storefront for One & Only, and Fairchild’s recent James Beard Award — is clearly experiencing a moment.
Lallande
1859 Monroe St.
608-733-9150; lallandemadison.com
4-10 p.m.Wed.-Sat.
$7-$42
