THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, November 20, 1994 TAG: 9411190043
SECTION: FLAVOR PAGE: F1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DONNA REISS, SPECIAL TO SUNDAY FLAVOR
LENGTH: Long : 117 lines
WHY COOK AT home, when the family on the corner turns out spicy daubes, hearty soupes, succulent herbed poulets and fluffy mousse - all for a modest prix?
That's how the bistros of Paris began, around the 19th century. Family-owned neighborhood restaurants were an extension of home for dwellers of the city, where closetlike kitchens were not always comfortable for cooking.
So the neighbors gathered at the bistro - for home-cooking they didn't cook.
In recent years, the bistro concept has come to America. In Hampton Roads, we've embraced it as well, visiting cozy little restaurants with names like The Dumbwaiter: An American Bistro; Le Chambord Bistro and Rotisserie; and Bistro!, among others.
Our spacious suburban kitchens may overflow with time-saving gadgets, but we don't have time to work all day, work out for an hour, shop for the tarragon, truss the chicken, spin the salad greens, blend the vinaigrette, separate the eggs, whisk the mousse, uncork the wine, grind the coffee - and then clean the kitchen before collapsing.
Our bistros offer nearby stops for chicken roasted with tarragon or poached fresh fish, sauteed seasonal vegetables, a simple green salad, a fluffy mousse, a glass of respectable table wine and a cappuccino.
Patricia Wells, the American food writer who reviewed restaurants for the French newspaper L'Express, helped herald the bistro's influence on America with her 1989 book ``Bistro Cooking.''
Here for American kitchens to try are the sausages and pates, the braised vegetables, the seasonal soups and the roasted meats whose fragrances filled the small restaurants found everywhere in France.
Typically run by families who shopped, cooked and served the food, they were ``unpretentious,'' says Wells.
She traces the origin of the word ``bistro'' to Russian soldiers invading Paris in 1815, or perhaps to a variant of bistrouille, a coffee and eau-de-vie concoction, or to bistrouiller, an inexpensive nonalcoholic substitute for wine.
The bible of French foods, ``Larousse Gastronomique,'' edited by Jenifer Harvey Lang (Crown Publishers, 1988), helps clarify the terminology: Add fancy accoutrements and you have a cafe; expand the bar and dining room and you have a brasserie. But keep it simple, small, homey and, voila, it's a bistro.
Sprinkle a little sawdust on the floor as Larousse suggests and '90s Americans might balk. But spread white paper on the tables and watch them scrawl pictures of their cars, their new suits, their vacation itineraries, or their agendas for the following week. FIRST ON THE BLOCK
First to open its doors with bistro in its title locally was Sydney Meers' Dumbwaiter, in 1987.
On an urban Norfolk corner a few blocks from a historic residential area and a new community of waterfront medium-rise condominiums, the venture had a subtitle: ``An American Bistro.''
Small, busy, everything cooked fresh, idiosyncratic to reflect the personal taste of the chef-owner. But the American take on the French custom was unmistakably influenced by Meers' Southern upbringing and his local culinary training.
Customers liked Meers' meatloaf, grits, freshly grilled fish and freshly sauteed vegetables. They loved his desserts, made by his own hands or to his own specifications. He chatted with customers; customers chatted with one another.
A few months ago, Meers moved his bistro down the street. His new restaurant, advertised as ``Beyond an American Bistro,'' is bigger and artier, but has even more inexpensive items for the the post-theater crowd and other diners.
Also on the fringes of the Freemason area but more deeply embedded in the nearby downtown business district, Bistro! was opened by Todd and Barbara Jurich in 1992.
The exclamation mark replaces the 210 in the York Street address and the original name, which they later dropped.
But don't look for French food at Bistro! Jurich and his coterie of chefs are new American. Modern American, he calls it, or eclectic, international, occasionally unusual.
A passion for Thai seasonings shows up here and there. Oyster stew with garlic mashed potatoes has become a trademark. Basic meats are garnished with buttermilk-battered onion rings or portobello mushrooms.
Like Wells, Jurich describes the bistro concept as ``unpretentious.'' It's a casual neighborhood restaurant, a small gathering place where friends can share good food and good times, Jurich says. Comfort food and friendly service are specialties.
Bigger than the usual bistro but no less committed to casual dining and a lively mood is Le Chambord's Bistro and Rotisserie in Virginia Beach.
Owners Frank and Louisa Spapen may not cook the food themselves, but they oversee every aspect of the enterprise, as they do with the elegant Le Chambord restaurant next door.
Standing behind the bar-counter of the rotisserie and saute kitchen, the cooks prepare moderately priced meals to order, in view of the patrons.
Hearty soups, whole and half-roasted chickens, fresh fish and upscale sandwiches are among the offerings in the mixture of European and American comfort foods.
A bit fancier than the other bistros but comparably priced, this version evolved from the Spapens' travels to California and Chicago. It's a neighborhood place where people can come in blue jeans, have dinner fast, have a good meal at a reasonable price, and go home, Frank Spapen says.
Bistro-like restaurants abound in Hampton Roads, even without the word in their titles: Pasta e Pani, Phil's Grill and the Coastal Grill in Virginia Beach; the Monastery and Blue Crab in Norfolk; Cafe Europa in Portsmouth.
All are family enterprises in or near neighborhoods that attract mostly local customers looking for moderately priced but personally prepared meals.
As Wells says in her book: ``Whatever its origins . . . a bistro is a place for good times with good friends.'' MEMO: Donna Reiss is a free-lance writer living in Virginia Beach and a
restaurant critic for The Virginian-Pilot and The Ledger-Star. She
writes the biweekly columns Bill of Fare and a la Carte. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
MORT FRYMAN/Staff
Phil Haushalter runs Phil's Grill in Virginia Beach. It's one of a
number of bistro-like restaurants in Hampton Roads.
by CNB