Bloomington Eats: Review of Le Petit Cafe

Especially compared to the rest of Indiana, Bloomington has a freakin' absurd number of international restaurants. We've got Thai and Mexican and Italian and Sushi, of course, but we also have Tibetan and Indian and Turkish and Burmese.

And French cuisine, too. At least, allegedly.

In February, I tried out Le Petit Cafe, one of the two French restaurants in town. I've been wanting to try this place for a very long time, but for various reasons (chiefly, that their hours are weird as hell) I hadn't made it before now.

Admittedly, my knowledge of French food is limited mainly to and images I gleaned from my years of obsessively watching Julie and Julia. And so, I think I was expecting some something like this:

Sole meuniere

or this...

Boeuf Bourguigon

And what I got was this:

 

and this: 

It was a lesson in expectation management, to say the least. But let me back up.

Le Petit Cafe is in downtown Bloomington, like many of the establishments which make up the international restaurant scene in our town. From the outside, it seems quite charming and individual, with some fetching murals on the side of the building

Inside, the restaurant is bigger than you would think, seeing it from the outside. And frankly, if the "crowd" there that evening was anything to go by, there's no need for that much space anyway, and it might be doing the proprietors a disservice. Admittedly, my dining companion and I got there right as the restaurant opened, so perhaps more people showed up later in the evening. Nothing about the decor or atmosphere struck me as unique, or beguiling, and it felt a bit cavernous. 

 That's okay, though. To be honest, I don't spend a lot of time contemplating the scenery unless something really stands out about the place.

Service was fine. Two people--I imagine the proprietors--with believable French accents brought us water and presented us with a slip of paper bearing a link to a YouTube video that told their story. Even now, I haven't looked at it.

There's no set menu at Le Petit Cafe; it's a limited, rotating menu based, I imagine, on what food is in season and available, and what the chef feels like making. At least the night we were there, the menu was a choice of a chicken dish, steak, or fish, with soup or a salad as a starter, as well as bread. (You know, the Hawaii roll pictured above.) Both my companion and I opted for the soup, also pictured above. It was an onion soup--whether the chef eschewed the term French onion  because, in a French restaurant, it's just onion soup, or because it didn't really resemble the cheesy flavorful soup that I know as French onion soup, I can't say--and it definitely wasn't much to look at. Taste-wise, it was okay. Kind of...earthy, I guess?

As for our main course, my companion opted for the chicken dish, which was basically a chicken cutlet smothered in a mushroom gravy:

And I chose the steak, covered in a bernaise sauce:

They also served us a side of mashed potatoes, wrapped in a croissant-like pastry crust.

Verdict? Y'all...My steak, it was bland. The steak was done to medium, possibly to medium-well, which is not my jam, at all. I found it to be rather chewy, as well. And the sauce, and the potato pastry thing...just didn't taste like much at all. I try not to salt most of my food, but in this case, the meal could have done with a lot of it. And other seasonings, too. Not sure about the chicken with mushroom-vomit on it.

It's rare (ha! see what I did there?) for me to leave a steak or potatoes uneaten, yet that's what I did at this meal.

Final thoughts: If you're looking for a delicious French restaurant here in Bloomington, keep looking.