Yesterday afternoon, I went to Bar Breton, a quaint little brasserie style restaurant on 5th avenue and 28th street. Granted, honestly you could have been in any major cosmopolitan city in the Western Hemisphere -- quite the nice trait in a restaurant. Yes, it is nice to walk into a place and know that you are in New York as well, but sometimes this geographical anonymity is a welcome surprise and quite the treat. It allows you to forget your city's food agenda but more specifically hopefully enables you, as the diner to dispose of any preconceived notions of what the food is going to be like and what-so-and-so said about the food and what this critic said about the place -- it instills a sense of naivete within you.
Back to Bar Breton...the cuisine at this little spot is inspired by the classic dishes of Chef Cyril Renaud's home of Brittany in the Northwest of France. The lunch menu is a nice mix of the flavors of Brittany translated into salads, sandwiches, mains, and of course galettes or buckwheat crepes -- you can't visit the region without trying one! Galettes are light and certainly nuttier than their more well-known crepe cousin, definitely an overlooked dish.
We started with their salad of arugula, enoki mushrooms, shaved parmesan, and a light lemony vinaigrette. So light, crisp, and clean, you couldn't go wrong with this salad. What I liked about the salad was the fact that it is not a typical pairing you see on restaurant appetizer menus but was the perfect amuse bouche. Also, the salad definitely highlighted the deliciousness of Enoki mushrooms - a member of the mushroom family that I certainly don't think gets sufficient time in the spotlight.
Following the salad, I had to have one their galettes, I settled on their Goat's Cheese & Sundried Tomato Gallete with Spinach coulis, Parmesan, basil and micro greens served open face, rather than folded like most traditional crepes. Upon first glance it almost looked like a crepe met a pizza and this was the result but it really wasn't. It had a lightness because of the buckwheat flour and thinness of a crepe but an inherent freshness from the ingredients and such a simple flavor combination but the backdrop of the galette made it dressed up and new!
A simple, delish place for a lowkey lunch, I would go back -- clean food, a nice atmosphere, nothing fussy, and not overpriced.
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