A Little Bit About a Lot of Things

Mistral is a French restaurant that is part of the Columbus Hospitality Group,” the company includes Teatro, a casual Italian-influenced neighborhood bistro, Sorellina, serving regional Italian-Mediterranean cuisine, Mooo formerly The Federalist, XV Beacon hotel’s modern steakhouse, and most recently L’Andana, a new concept in Tuscan style dining located on Route 3A North in Burlington, MA.” Having been to the other restaurants in the group, I had high expectations for Mistral.

We stopped in for  Sunday brunch-it was nice to see that they had valet parking available on the weekend. The hostess was welcoming and friendly-she led us to a table towards the back. The restaurant was near capacity-but the noise level was at a normal level (unlike at Teatro, where I tend to find myself yelling across the table). The space is open and inviting, it definitely has a European feel to it. We sit in a booth with a corner bench and peruse the menu while we snack on the complimentary coffee cake.

I have to say that everything on the menu looks excellent-there are so many things that we want to try. And as we see other tables orders come out, it just makes our decision that much more difficult. We place our order and wait. Other tables around us are sat, and their food comes out before ours. The hostess comes over and explains to us that there was a ‘miscommunication between the server and the kitchen, they know we have been waiting a long time for our food, and it will be coming right out.’ We are told that because we had to wait an hour for our pancakes, that they will be taking care of the bill for us. Thank you Mistral-that is excellent customer service, and we really appreciate that! We expected nothing less.

Moving on to the food-pictured above is the chocolate chip pancakes with carmelized bananas and some plantain chips ($14). The pancakes are loaded with chocolate-so much so that I can only eat 2 out of 3. The bananas on top are excellent, they have that nice caramelized sugar crust (like what you find on top of creme brulee-that comes from broiling or torching sugar). The presentation is excellent-pure artistry.

We also order the lemon blueberry pancakes with ricotta on top ($14). Also an excellent dish. The lemon flavor is subtle and the blueberry pancakes couldn’t be fluffier. The ricotta is perfectly whipped into a light airy swirl on top of the pancakes, and it melts a little when we spread it over the pancakes. YUM!

The pancakes come with pommes lyonnaise  to share. They are potatoes cooked in butter (or fat) with onions. This dish was prepared well-just what you want all breakfast potatoes to be like. They are crisp on the outside, and just the right firmness on the inside. The onions add excellent flavoring to the dish, along with the healthy dose of salt that is added.

We are very impressed with our breakfast-even if the service was a little lacking (hey, everyone has a bad day)-and we can’t wait to go back for another round of brunch, and perhaps we will take a stab at dinner.

Here are some of the other things that we saw that we were really interested in:

The sticky buns ($7). You need to give them 15 minutes because they are baked to order. They come in a cast iron skillet, enormous in size, and covered in that delicious frosting. We were salivating from across the room.

The hot callebaut chocolate with hand crafted marshmallow ($5). Looked amazing, and the marshmallow was huge!

The smoked salmon 12″ thin crust pizza ($15)-the table next to us ordered it-and it looked amazing. Made with creme fraiche whipped potatoes and scallions!

And finally….the 14oz sirloin steak and eggs ($32) that is presented in a copper pan. The steak was quite large-I was impressed that a tiny girl at the table next to us managed to eat the whole thing!

Mistral
223 Columbus Avenue, Boston, MA | 617.867.9300

www.mistralbistro.com

Tags: back bay, brunch, fine dining, restaurant