Surprise dish that won over The Mouth at Sydney restaurant Bouillon L’Entrecote

This week Sydney restaurant reviewer, The Mouth, heads to popular French restaurant Bouillon L’Entrecote. Find out the simple dish that sent him to Paris.

Johan Giausseran and Vincent Ventura, owners of Bouillon L'Entrecote.

Beneath his doltish suburban facade, back in the day Homer Simpson was an absolute font of wit and wisdom.

“Trying is the first step towards failure.”

“Alcohol (is) the cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems.”

“It takes two to lie … one to lie, and one to listen.”

But after years of agreement, The Mouth now takes issue with one of the big yellow man’s most famous pronouncements: “You don’t win friends with salad.”

“What?” we hear you exclaim, “hasn’t The Mouth always been suspicious of everything green this side of, and possibly including, St Patrick’s Day?”

Indeed. Yet the other night we were at Bouillon L’Entrecote, a perfectly Disneyfied French bistro of the sort Sydney does so well.

Stairway to Bouillon L'Entrecote. Source: Supplied

Our waiters were so over the top French we wondered whether they were just putting it on with the accents and just nodded along as if we’d just stepped out of our St Germain Airbnb for a bite to eat after a long flight.

The whole place is done in that particular French bistro vernacular, with loads of old advertising prints and chairs outside facing the footpath.

The whole experience could have been made more authentic with some riots, but alas the nanny state means torching cars on Loftus Street is frowned upon. Bloody Karens.

French restaurant Bouillon L'Entrecote at Quay Quarters salad sent The Mouth spinning. Source: Supplied

The only glitch in the matrix was a reproduction of Holbein’s famous portrait of St Thomas More, which later sent us down a rabbit hole to see if Henry the VIII’s old legal nemesis had some secret French connection we didn’t know about. He didn’t.

The food? Serviceable to good, with the great disappointment being a “ballotin” of cabbage stuffed with foie gras being unavailable on the night.

French restaurant Bouillon L'Entrecote.

A little slab of terrine was OK but underwhelming, the steak tartare good, duck confit excellent, and a grilled sirloin cooked perfectly – if sliced a little too thin for our liking.

But the big win of the night?

A simple salad of greens and walnut immaculately dressed with the most perfect, sharp French dressing that cut through the richness of every other dish and did what every other element of the place was trying to do.

Namely, it sent us back – if for a moment – to Paris.

You don’t win friends with salad?

Sorry, Homer, you might have been right that “stupid risks make life worth living.”

But on the subject of salad, we say reconsider.

— The Mouth is an anonymous critic and bon vivant who pays his own way around Sydney and beyond.