Veal sweetbread is served over a waffle that's topped with a one-hour egg yolk and smoked bacon with huckleberry emulsion.

Palate Bistro

212 Sixth St., downtown
412/434-1422
palatebistro.com

Experience haute cuisine with a contemporary twist at Palate Bistro, a new dining option in the Cultural District.

Dinner: Mon.-Wed., 5-10 p.m.; Thurs.-Sat., 5-11 p.m.
Appetizers: $8-$16
Entrees: $18-$34
Dessert: $8

 

Modern French Palate

I love everything about Palate Bistro, the new French restaurant across from Heinz Hall, from the "modern French" cuisine and zany internal architecture to its classy, European style of service. Even the cutlery is interesting; its sleek, perfectly balanced lines would put a gyroscope to shame.

Here's the story of a restaurant that is romantic because just the flavors can make you swoon. But the fact that owner John Valentine has snagged executive chef Ryan Racicot from behind the stoves at Trilogy could make any foody's heart beat too fast.

Long and lithe, the restaurant's two stories are stacked and staggered around a skeejawed staircase. Each level defines its own mystique, creating a multitude of seating options, each with its own virtue; hence that table by the window isn't necessarily the best in the house. High ceilings and a mezzanine arrangement balance two opposing dynamics - wide-open, without being unfriendly; cozy, without being claustrophobic. Sup on the mezzanine where the conversation-generating, 20-foot video pairs artistic images of great beauty in Paris with comparable Pittsburgh counterparts.

Scenes of both Paris and Pittsburgh play on a video screen mounted on the wall at Palate Bistro. Photo by Laura Petrilla

When I visited the second time, before you could say "pot-au-feu," I leapt at the chance to sit at the bar and order steak frites (a dish any French bistro must get right) from "le bar menu," where everything, including the already-famous hearty mushroom risotto, is priced at $7.

Amazing partnerships often arise from mysterious circumstances, and, in this case, Valentine met Racicot over that mushroom risotto at Trilogy. Valentine was in town working with commercial developer Madison Marquette, a real-estate firm from New York City, on a new restaurant at the old G.C. Murphy site in Market Square. When the deal fell apart, Valentine was left with a severe case of Pittsburgh-itis. Smitten by the groundswell of activity in the Cultural District, he spent two years searching for a spot of his own. "I really didn't want your typical boxed, rectangular space; I wanted something with character," he explained. When he found 212 Sixth St., he thought of Union Square Café in New York City because of a similar use of space - "Perfect," he concluded.

The kitchen opts for local ingredients but will reach as far as New Zealand (venison, for example) to source the kind of standards on par with Daniel and Le Bernadine, Racicot's favorite New York haunts. Amish chicken and organic duck are procured from farms in Indiana. Fish arrives from Brown Trading Co. of Portland, Maine, which has purveyors in docks around the world, eliminating hours on ice or middlemen. Racicot has already earned a reputation among locals for his determination to stay ahead of the pack. "It all starts with Ryan," says Valentine. "He's an original." Racicot is a chef who personally does things that are time-consuming and tedious, such as breaking down the whole skate wing or saddle of venison, or using the sous vide (vacuum packed, cooked at 73 degrees Celsius, seared, basted with butter) method of cooking for organic chicken to deliver a better product. Racicot and Valentine are a great match. They strive to do things other restaurants don't do. Instead of serving filet mignon, they serve bison. Instead of a waterfall in the obvious space, they produce thematic film snippets that run in a two-hour loop.

Lovers of classic French food will appreciate the spirit of this place, where an ordinary cheese plate turns into a flight of fancy - a Whitman's sampler of cheese, which includes a soft, pungent époisses de Bourgogne, a hard-as-parmesan smoked Spanish Idiazabal and rich cabreles blue. You also will need an open mind and an eclectic palate. You can smell the duck consommé as your server pours the soup from a teapot tableside onto two duck tortellini stuffed with roasted duck and foie gras over scallions. "Anybody can roast a cut of meat," laughs the chef. "It's the little details that intrigue me, the nuances that can take hours of preparation."

And so Palate pokes a few holes in ancient French gastronomic axioms. Veal sweetbread medallions, which taste like custard, are served on a waffle with an egg yolk cooked for one hour. The dish is served with a slice of Neuske's (Wisconsin) smoked bacon and huckleberry emulsion instead of syrup, and is topped with a tiny whole huckleberry. "It makes you think about breakfast," says the chef, who claims this as his favorite appetizer.

Venison loin dauphinois with a potato cake, cranberry compote and asparagus.

Servers are generous with ideas, reminding us that a modern French restaurant stretches its defining character to include gastronomic fusion, leading us to pan-roasted day-boat scallops ingeniously rendered with butternut squash and ennis hazelnut ravioli, with pumpkin seeds in vanilla brown butter drizzled over the top. Venison loin, roasted whole and broken down in the kitchen, is rich without being "gamy," with a gratin-like dauphinoise potato cake made with Comté (French gruyère) cheese, nutmeg and cream, cranberry compote, candied orange and an otherworldly cassis jus. I was told I had to try the skate, an underused mild fish. The chef says it reminds him of the flounder his grandmother served on Christmas Eve.

His version, however, eliminates the traditional brown butter, adding fingerling potato coins stewed with creamed leeks in a soft, sultry sauce verjus (an alternative to vinegar; it's the first pressing of the grapes with a little butter), which brings out the spare, austere nature of the fish. American sturgeon caviar on top explodes with flavor.

Organic duck is a rich, dual scheme: The breast is wrapped in blanched Swiss chard, followed by eight layers of phyllo and then baked (a modern take on a "Wellington"); a leg is braised in classic à l'orange and served over creamy rutabaga fondant with pistachios. Scottish salmon with a white-bean and crayfish cassoulet (the skin is meant to be eaten) in a silky lobster sauce uses a touch of coconut for intrigue.

While nostalgists say that the French do not consider vegetables food, a cunning plate of mill-cove oysters with tomato and horseradish sorbet and some honey-lacquered roasted beets with 25-year-old balsamic, goat-cheese truffles and Granny Smiths challenges the dogma. Pancetta-wrapped monkfish rendered in a golden-raisin emulsion with mashed Peruvian purple potatoes topped with caperberries paired with a lively fleur-de-sel cauliflower is an example of a side dish the house goes all out for. After the cauliflower is roasted whole, seasoned, chopped and tossed with golden raisins, it resembles couscous. I swear it's taken precedence in my dreams over pastry chef Mary Brozio's awesome homemade goat-cheese cheesecake. Imagine.

Each month, Deborah McDonald jump-starts appetites with lively restaurant reviews that scrutinize who's cooking what and where. She works anonymously, visiting each restaurant at least twice before writing her column.

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