Finest dining à la française across the land
As with Broadway theater, the death knell for deluxe French restaurants in America has been sounded so many times in recent years that it seems almost a self-fulfilling prophecy. Yet while few classic French restaurants of a certain kind that once defined fine dining in America are likely to open in the future, many of the grandest and most innovative French dining rooms are still to be found in the U.S., and they would rank with the best in France itself.
Long the arbiter of excellence when it comes to French cuisine, the Michelin Guide has in recent years discovered—quelle surprise!—that the very best restaurants in the U.S. are French, an assertion not all American chefs and gourmets would agree with. Yet Michelin’s selections and ratings among U.S.-based French restaurants are largely indisputable, ranging from the highly influential Le Bernardin in New York to the wondrous French Laundry in California’s Napa Valley wine country—both with the highest rating of three stars.
See our slideshow of Best French Restaurants in the U.S.
So, too, Michelin has awarded three stars to Jean-Georges and Per Se in New York, and to Joël Robuchon in Las Vegas, along with dozens of other two- and one-star awards to French restaurants in New York, Las Vegas, San Francisco, and Los Angeles—the only cities the guides now cover.
If, however, they did cover the U.S. they would find superb French restaurants in most major cities, including Chef Michel Richard’s Citronelle in Washington, D.C., a Relais & Châteaux Relais Gourmand member that Gourmet Magazine called one of the 20 best restaurants in the U.S.; The Dining Room at the Ritz-Carlton Buckhead in Atlanta, which has five prestigious Mobil stars; L’Éscalier at The Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach, which has 5 AAA diamonds and a Grand Award from Wine Spectator for its winelist; and the appropriately named French Room at the Adolphus Hotel in Dallas.
Although Los Angeles has plenty of French food, there are few posh French restaurants. A signal exception is Ortolan, not only because of the highly creative haute cuisine Chef-Owner Christophe Emé serves—it was Esquire Magazine’s pick as one of the top 20 new restaurants of 2005—but for presence of a glamorous Hollywood celeb crowd that includes Emé’s wife and business partner, actress Jeri Ryan.
Few restaurants in America have won the accolades that Charlie Trotter’s of Chicago has. Now 20 years old, the eponymously named restaurant serves three daily tasting menus, including one vegetarian. The winelist is 1,800 labels strong. No wonder Chicago Magazine has written of Trotter: “He has risen to the top of the contemporary American restaurant scene with an uncanny ability to ‘intuit flavor before it happens.’ He's driven, he knows exactly where he wants to go, and lucky are the folks who'll meet him there.”
See our slideshow of Best French Restaurants in the U.S.
Even outside of the major U.S. cities fine French food is flourishing, sometimes with a French chef at the helm, often not. In tony Greenwich, Connecticut, in a jewelbox of a dining room named Restaurant Jean-Louis, Chef-owner Jean-Louis Gérin, once chef de cuisine for the renowned Guy Savoy in Paris, has for two decades been a beacon of good taste, as well as winning the “Best Chef in the Northeast” award from the James Beard Foundation.
In Wheeling, Illinois—a 45-minute trek from downtown Chicago—Saigon-born Chef Roland Liccioni has been keeper of the flame at the renowned, 30-year-old Le Français since 2005, while in Brewster on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, Nitzi Rabin has maintained the luster of Chillingsworth, located on a beautiful 300-year-old estate, where seasonal seven-course meals are served on a superb collection of antique china and stemware. Of this uniquely situated restaurant, Boston Magazine wrote, “Chillingsworth is home to one of the most enchanting dining experiences in all of New England [and] charms with the luscious richness of French cuisine mixed with a soupçon of brighter, lighter flavors.”
And in San Antonio, Texas, Le Rêve Cuisine is where Chef-Owner Andrew Weissman (who started cooking for the camera crew in a Mexico City newsroom) prepares a seasonal eight-course tasting menu for $100 that might begin with an onion tart and end with a hazelnut soufflé. Texas Monthly Magazine called Le Rêve the best restaurant in the Lone Star State.
Even if all deluxe French restaurants disappeared tomorrow from every city but New York, the opportunities to dine exceptionally in the high Gallic style are legion, from the very classic La Grenouille, Chanterelle, and Le Périgord to established templates like Le Cirque and Daniel, to newcomers like Adour by Alain Ducasse and Gordon Ramsay at The London. And these are just the haute cuisine dining rooms—New York and other American cities have a remarkable number of remarkable bistros and brasseries, but that is a story for another day.
Right now there has never been better French haute cuisine in America, and, given the value of the U.S. dollar against the euro in France, staying home and feasting seem the ideal way to find out.
Here are ten of the very best.