I had a pleasure of dining at their original spot in West Village about a year ago (you can read about it here : http://www.foodlovergirl.com/boucherie/). Now that they have a secondary location in Gramercy Park, we went to check it out. The restaurant was easy to spot with bright red awnings.
The inside was astonishingly beautiful, just like the Boucherie at the West Village, but different feel to it. The West Village location was more like an old Victorian French. Here, it was a bit more Gothic, with the arches that made me think of historic churches. They have a nice long bar to the left of the entrance, fully stocked.
There is a bit of separation in the middle of the floor, separating the bar side and the right side. The right side is bigger with lots of seating. Most of them were table seating, the tables are rather small… They do have nice booth seating as well for a bigger group.
Some interesting spots were the Charcuterie at the entrance, and the semi-open kitchen at the back. Both spots have the nice arch at the top, keeping the same feel as the rest of the space. I always enjoy seeing into the kitchen, where the magic gets made…
The restaurant is surrounded by large windows that goes from floor to ceiling, bringing in lots of natural lights. They take advantages of the high ceiling, hanging large French art everywhere, creating a really fun yet classic vibe.
They brought complimentary bread with butter and amuse-bouche for the table. This is where the danger is hiding…you don’t want to get filled up with bread before your meal. But, we had to taste the bread…
The bread was nice and dense, but airy at the same time. It had nice texture and a bit chewy in a good way. The small plate of amuse-bouche contained eggplant and pearl onions. Very nicely flavored, with good amount of seasoning. It is always good to get something a little extra to wake up the taste buds.
We started our dinner with some cocktails. We chose Franco Mexican War ($16) and Spearmint ($16). Both of them came in an interesting shaped glass, nice sizes too.
Franco Mexican War is made with Pernod, Suze, Mezcal, Lime & Aperol. It was sweet and spicy at the same time, without being too spicy. Fruity and very flavorful, with just a little kick – a perfect drink for me!
Spearmint is made with Arak Brun, Bols Genever, Lime Cordial, Mint Leaves and Lime Juice. It tasted like a high end spearmint candy. Very refreshing and tasty! One thing is that it has a very strong flavor, so it might not be a good cocktail to pair with a dish that has strong flavor as well. Maybe a nice cocktail with a dessert?
We ordered a couple of appetizers. The first one was Raviolis aux Champignons ($31). It is a mushroom ravioli with black truffle beurre fondue and burgundy truffles.
It had Shiitake, porcini, and portabella, with basically a butter cream and truffle. It was super flavorful and creamy, and had great aroma and flavor of truffle. Each ravioli was nice and large, filled with mushrooms. I didn’t think too much of it when I was ordering, but I tell you, it was heavenly! Each bite was explosion of flavor, these mushrooms really shined in this dish. Mushroom tends to play the side-kick to the main star, but here, they truly were the star! Excellent dish to start off the meal!
The second appetizer we ordered was Pâtes aux Fruits de Mer ($29). It is made with squid ink linguini, sepia, rick shrimp and tomatoes.
It also had some potatoes, and yes, huge and plump shrimps! Generous amount of seafood, with beautifully glossy, black-ink linguini. This was really an awesome dish and very filling. The pasta was cooked just right, and all the seafood were plump and flavorful. The amount of spice was perfect too, working with the natural sweet flavor of tomato. Loved it!
For main, I ordered Filet de Bœuf ($52), which is a center cut filet mignon and truffle butter. I do love truffle…
It was a pretty good size steak, not too big but definitely not small. It was cooked just the way I requested. It was nice and buttery from the truffle butter that was placed on top like a crown. It certainly had great truffle flavor that seeped into the steak, the side veggies were nice too, perfect little companions. The sauce or should I say jus from the steak was amazing. We ate it up with bread after the juicy steak was gone. Steak was excellent, had little chewy texture but tender, packed with flavor that brought out the natural flavor of the beef.
My husband ordered “Cut of the Week” which was Filet Mignon and Queue Homard ($61). This is their version of “Surf & Turf” and it comes with beef tenderloin, lobster tail, lemon and garlic butter.
This one was more refreshing with veggie flavor in the sauce, compared to the Filet de Bœuf. The lobster was plump and it was delicious since it soaked up the umami from the jus. The beef was again cooked just the way we wanted, tender and juicy, packed with flavor. It was a fun dish, with lots of veggies such as tomatoes and squash, grilled to the point it almost melt in your mouth. We loved the sauce on this one as well, we used the bread to soak them up the jus off the plate!
While we were enjoying the main dishes, we ordered two more cocktails. This time, we went with Wildflower ($16) and Coccinella ($16).
Wildflower is made with Absinthe, Gin, Watermelon Juice, Lavender Syrup, Lemon and Egg White. It came in a large glass, but it was filled with crushed ice, so in the end, it wasn’t that much of liquid in it. Anyways, it was sweet with wonderful watermelon flavor. Very Summery!
Coccinera is made with Pink Gin, Rosé Brut, Mara des Bois and Rose Water. The Rosé Brut is great, it was and elegant cocktail with beautiful bright red color. It had a small rose bud floating on top, which elevated the look.
We decided to end the wonderful meal with a dessert to share. They had enticing dessert menu, but we ended up with Profiteroles ($11). I always enjoy profiteroles, but each restaurant does it a bit different, so I was excited to see what would actually come out. When it arrived, I was happy with the size of the dessert. It was much bigger than I thought, which was great. It had chocolate syrup was glistening over the puff pastry, which was sandwiching vanilla ice cream.
The only thing that would made this dessert extra special would be, if they brought the dessert with the chocolate syrup on the side, and then pour it at the table. But anyways, it was pretty darn good! It had real cacao flavor in the chocolate, high quality and tasty. Puff pastry was light and airy. Ice cream was velvety and it was exactly what I wanted. A great ending to a wonderful dinner!!!
The bathroom is at the back, to the right, through a narrow hallway.
They had a dark chocolate-colored door by the red brick wall, and it is a nice size bathroom. Not too large, but good enough size with three bathroom stalls. Clean and bright, but it was not very well stocked. For example, the seat cover was completely out in the stall that I used, even though it was still early evening.
And then, they had the soap dispenser on the wall….well, they supposed be on the wall. The one on the right was attached to the wall and working well, but then the one of the left was broken and just sitting on the counter. The sink was good size, and was double sink with marble counter top. For a pretty bathroom, it is sad to see it not in its perfect shape. Hopefully it got back to good standing right away.
Our server was very nice and attentive, she took a good care of us. All the other staffs were nice too, they replaced small plates and silverware between meals. Our server also cleaned our table off between dinner and dessert. Anytime we finished a plate, it was picked up promptly. The only thing was the second round of cocktails took a long while, but the server apologized for it and told us what was going on with that in timely manner. Overall, it was a wonderful dinner with warm and inviting atmosphere. We enjoyed everything that we ordered, both food and drinks. Their steak was packed flavor, and again, the sauce and jus was just amazing! I would love to go back again for more!
Boucherie Park – 225 Park Ave S, New York, NY 10003