At sultry Bar Lesieur, the kitchen lacks consistency and finesse
The Schulson Collective's lastest project has an intimate brasserie vibe and good cocktails. But the cooking falls flat.
Everyone wants the chocolate soufflé, that sweet icon of French elegance, a steamy cocoa-scented cloud that levitates above its ramekin like a magic trick. Even centuries after its invention, it remains a magnetic and majestic finale. But it’s also notoriously finnicky and time-consuming to make. Should we have requested ours in advance at Bar Lesieur?
“No worries: We have our own way of doing it,” a manager assured me. “It takes no extra time at all.”
Sure enough, it appeared within moments alongside a couple other sweets, each with issues of their own — a runny-centered crême brûlée made with duck eggs, and a Paris-Brest whose ring-shaped pâte à choux was as limp as a soggy doughnut. The soufflé? It was cakey on the outside, vaguely gooey at the core, and also half cold. A forgettable lava cake, maybe. But definitely not a soufflé.
“That’s why we put the ‘soufflé' in quotes on the menu,” the manager explained with a please-don’t-shoot-the-messenger shrug.
A diner can be excused for missing the sneaky menu punctuation in the low-lit sepia glow of the dining room at Bar Lesieur, whose kitchen is apparently so small that made-to-order soufflés are technically impractical. But putting quotes around an aspiration doesn’t make it real, no matter how convenient that little shortcut might seem. And based on the rest of my meals, watching a kitchen that struggled to properly cook a potato, I could just as well put winky quotes around several other dishes that lacked the discipline, depth, or finesse of genuine “French cuisine.”
There’s a risk now that an air of concept-du-jour impermanency will hover above anything the Schulson Collective installs in the ground floor space above its massive subterranean Giuseppe & Sons on Sansom Street. The revolving-door entrance has become an apt metaphor for the parade of short-lived concepts there over the last six years, from the original Italian American luncheonette to a Neapolitan-style pizzeria, and then Samuel’s, the scratch pastrami deli I enjoyed but which hardly lasted a year. (It’s set for a revival this summer at Ocean Casino Resort).
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But constructing the lavishly outfitted Bar Lesieur, named for the late-19th-century Philadelphia bon vivant, Louis Lesieur, was no half-baked pop-up transformation. Owner Michael Schulson, an architectural engineering student turned chef, did a nice job designing the room with familiar touches of brasserie romance. Tufted leather banquettes are tucked behind bricked archways dividing the L-shaped space, with distressed mirrors, walnut wood accents and pendant lights keeping the mood clubby, and perforated tin ceiling tiles moderately buffering the noise.
The sexy lounge vibe is a Schulson forté that continues here at the handsome zinc bar in front, where the post-work Market Street crowd and cashmere-clad Rittenhouse singles, or the occasional group of Freemasons in tuxedos passing through to the dining room for dinner, can be found sipping Frenchified cocktails and wine. The Parisian Breakfast (a marmalade martini with tea syrup and an egg white foam) and the French Bird (Martinique rhum with coconut-washed Campari) are popular choices.
There are thoughtful zero proof cocktails, too. The drink program from corporate beverage director Michael McCauley is one of the things Bar Lesieur does best. That includes an approachable French wine list with 15 moderately priced wines by the glass (plus 80 bottles), including a cab franc from Pierre Tailleurs in Carcassone that had enough ripe fruit to pair with both the salmon and roast chicken — two entrees with decidedly different results.
I was skeptical of the gimmicky salmon served beneath a glass dome filled with smoke. But it was a playful contemporary twist on a potentially dull entree, the seared fillet moist from its butter bath and the smoke present but not overwhelming, allowing the horseradish gribiche and a surprising caramelized cabbage foam to keep my fork in motion.
The roast chicken should have been a slam dunk, a $69 splurge for two presented whole with copper pan fanfare in the dining room before it’s returned to the kitchen to be carved. Our finished bird, though, was noticeably pale after just 25 minutes in Lesieur’s high-tech oven, not the deep golden brown of the picture above. The chicken is brined then hung for a week to dry the skin and intensify flavor, but it was startlingly salty, its sodium glow boosted even more by the treacly contrast of a reduced chicken jus that was borderline sweet.
A side of dry mashed potatoes was also oversalted, while another copper pan held boiled baby Brussels sprouts that were so bitter and mushy at the edges, they undid two decades-worth of forgetting why people hated Brussels sprouts to begin with. The same Brussels (minus the bacon) were also piled next to a beet salad for the pitiful “vegetarian entree” that this kitchen, flummoxed like it was 1999, cobbled together for a guest who noted zero options for vegetarians among the nine main courses.
I was surprised. The Collective has a culinary ace behind the scenes: corporate chef Chris Painter, the onetime star who helped launch multiple Philly hits (Tangerine, Angelina, Il Pittore) before he left town after sexual harassment allegations at Wm. Mulherin’s Sons in 2018. His recent return to work with Schulson is an opportunity for a fresh start. Painter, who’d been running a chicken sandwich shop in his hometown Pottsville, said he’s glad to be back in a place where he could be creative. And he’s always been a fine cook. But he’s also responsible for overseeing food at the company’s 10 active restaurants, and this kitchen has been in transition, changing chefs de cuisines between my visits. Inconsistency happens when a smart corporate game plan doesn’t have the steady talent on site to execute menus with more than paint-by-numbers feeling.
There were a few positives. The coquilles St. Jacques showcased sweet bay scallops in the shell broiled with Pernod-scented mousseline sauce and mushroom duxelles. A mushroom carpaccio brought shaved ribbons of snappy king oysters topped with toasted pine nuts and a Champagne-thyme vinaigrette. The sweetbreads with hazelnuts took on the added dynamic of smoked chanterelles. The poached lobster salad over gingery citrus vinaigrette was cheerful, and the tuna crudo with blood orange, pistachios, and candied kumquats was refreshing and bright.
Too many dishes, though, were sabotaged by careless cooking. An intriguing tortellini stuffed with brandade was too timid with its salt cod swagger, but a bigger issue was the garnish of chorizo bits rendered to such inedibly hard nuggets, I mistook them for stones. Too much rosemary syrup turned folded crepes into mush beneath artless ice cream scoops of goat cheese. The hot mushroom appetizer, redundant among the starters beside the carpaccio, was served over a theoretically delicate pâte brisée that tasted instead like a doughy biscuit. The chilled foie gras mousse was stiff and gray. The dry-aged duck, suggested to us medium-rare, came with flabby skin and breast meat that had a bulls-eye of raw flesh at the center. Quack.
One can’t help contrast the warm shrimp salad to the very similar hit at nearby Parc, but these crustaceans were served in an overly brothy butter that might as well have been soup. The comparisons to Parc are inevitable, given that so many Schulson team members are alums of the standby Rittenhouse brasserie. Baker Nicholas Brannon’s trio of crusty breads are still a welcome bite of fresh-baked hospitality to start each meal (the roasted shallot loaf is the bread equivalent of French onion soup). And Schulson Collective vice president, Kareem McCafferty, insists Bar Lesieur has enough of its own twists on the French canon that it’s “not a Parc cut-and-paste.”
The steak-frites is one example because it’s been upsized for sharing, an 18-ounce bone-in N.Y. strip from the dry-aging room at Alpen Rose, Schulson’s excellent steak boutique. This prime cut was among the most satisfying things I ate at Bar Lesieur, perfectly cooked, tender, and complex, with a minerally savor glazed in garlic-herb butter. It was worth the $63, but would have been even better if our fries hadn’t been so terrible. Neither crisp nor particularly hot, these thrice-cooked “frites” were chewy. Potato problems persist.
At least the desserts on my final visit showed improvement. The Paris-Brest, delivered from the Collective’s commissary every other day, still retained a faint crunch. But the pear Bourdaloue stole the show, a lightly brûléed rosette of vanilla-poached pear atop an almond cream tarte with candied almonds and vanilla-rich ice cream. Topped with a pretty leaf-shaped tuile, it was a truly rewarding and delicious finale. No quotation marks required.
Bar Lesieur
1523 Sansom St., Philadelphia; 215-330-2732; barlesieur.com
Menu served Sunday through Thursday, 5-10 p.m. Friday and Saturday, until 11 p.m.
Wheelchair accessible.
Very few gluten-free or vegetarian entree options.
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