I feel full of shame that I hadn’t gone to Bistrot La Minette earlier. I’ve passed by it dozens of times. It’s right across the street from Beau Monde. I always saw it and said to myself, hmm, I wonder if that place is any good. I just had no idea that it was an authentic French bistro and that it would be so darn good. Maybe I was afraid of French food. I just don’t know. But I’ve finally righted my wrong. So they do a prix fixe on sundays, $29(!) for four courses, and the menu changes weekly. And man, it was stupendous.
There are some cute tables outside and when you go in, it immediately feels like you’re in Paris. It really is quite transformative. What do we start with? Baguette! So good and served with the most delicious salted butter.
Here’s the amuse bouche – rillet on a little mini crostini.
Our first official course was the Soupe Parmentier. It was a winter root vegetable soup with fried leeks, butter-roasted chestnuts, and parsley oil. This was so velvety smooth and rooty. It definitely is made with roots, but nothing was overly bitter. The chestnuts were so good! I wish there had been more of them!
Next up was the Grillé au Cantal. It was a hunk of breaded and fried Cantal cheese with cauliflower and haricots verts in a lemon vinaigrette. It was like cheese tempura! It was a bit on the overly crunchy side, but who doesn’t like fried cheese!
The main entree was the Bœuf Bourguignon. You know what this is, it’s a beef stew with mushrooms, lardons, pearl onions, and potatoes dauphine. This stew had an intense flavor and the meat was tender and juicy. My favorite thing about this were the potatoes dauphine! They like deep fried mashed potato balls! So the puffed outside is a little crispity but the potato on the inside is whipped and creamy. It was so awesome.
And finally, for dessert, the Tarte au Citron et son Sorbet Cassis. It was a super duper lemony tart with a cassis sorbet. The whole thing was great, especially the cassis sorbet. It was so much food! And it was all delicious! We were both absolutely crazy about it. The service was also excellent, from our extremely blond server. He would have looked extremely at home in a Russian figure skating program. Early on when we first got there, which was like early bird time, it was pretty much deserted. But later in the night, we were happy to see lots more people show up. And you should show up too!

My mom’s birthday came around again, which meant it was time to go eat sushi! We stuck with the burbs, but since neither of us had ever been, we went to Bluefin in Plymouth Meeting. And even on a tuesday night, and after making reservations in advance, we still could only get a seat at the sushi bar. It’s kind of crazy how busy this place is. It’s so unassuming on the outside, being in a random sad little strip mall. But it’s quite nice on the inside. We indeed sat at the sushi bar and all the sushi dudes were busy, busy, busy the entire time we were there.
I always like to get a salad to check out what the dressing is like. It was good! I also thought the miso soup was quite good, but my mom thought it was a little bit too salty. I think she’s slowly going senile, it was perfectly good soup.
The server guy, or owner guy, or manager guy, recommended the Usuzukuri as an appetizer. It is extremely thinly sliced fluke served in a yuzu dressing with jalapeño paste. This was delicious but totally unecessary. The fish is super fresh (brought in daily except sundays) and it absolutely melts in your mouth. The jalapeno paste is also pretty darn spicy, but goes really well with the fish. I say it was unecessary because once we were done eating this thing, I was already getting fairly full, and we hadn’t even gotten our sushi yet. So it nearly rendered our entrees practically useless. This is typically why I’m not all that into appetizers, because I’m a fan of the main event.
I really love agedashi tofu, so I wanted to try it here. Boy, was that ever a mistake. I am hoping this was just a major snafu. It was like they had some sauce concentrate, an they forgot to dilute it. It was mad, crazy salty and not in a good way. The tofu itself was great and so were all the fixins, but the sauce was terrible. Major fail!
So my mom got the Sushi Dinner with 8 pieces of assorted sushi and a crunchy spicy tuna roll. Holy big pieces of fish, batman! Here’s something that blew our minds – how large these pieces of fish were. They do not skimp here! The ratio of fish to rice is about 4:1, no joke. Like the fish in our appetizer, it’s all super fresh and they also do not skimp with the wasabi either.
This is the Noname Roll I, with avocado topped on a shrimp tempura roll with unagi sauce, tempura chips, and roe. Oh man, this was good! The avocado was super ripe and buttery and melty and it’s also quite huge and filling.
I don’t know if they even have proper dessert here, but you just get free dessert there. You get some fruit and some fried bananas. Not too shabby! Overall, the food was good and the sushi was fresh. But it’s hard to overlook the major agedashi tofu fiasco. The service was good. Considering just how busy it was, the food came out at a decent pace. I’m not quite convinced that it’s worth all the hype, but it was a nice night out.

On my second day of jury duty, I took a quick walk to lunch on some soup and a sandwich at House. Look how cute this place is! I couldn’t resist going into a place that also shares the name of my favorite TV show about an ornery curmudgeon doctor.
This was the corn and bell pepper soup, which was the soup of the day. Oh my word, this was delicious. It kind of looks awful, but it’s amazingly sweet and delicious. It’s chunky and coarse, but in a good way. The corn flavor is super strong and it’s just incredibly hearty. This is some of the best corn soup I’ve ever had.
I got a soup and sandwich combo, and my sandwich was the El Nino. The gal at the counter recommended it and said that it was quite popular. This beauty has avocado chicken salad, tomatoes, and bacon, with chipotle remoulade and is grilled on a panini press. Again, just like the soup, this was a total winner. Avocado chicken salad? Give me more! Every single ingredient in this worked well together. It was a fantastic sandwich! This place is adorable. If I was a local I’d be a regular!