I have been having a weekly lunch with my grandma for over 8 years. Last week, we were shopping in Grapevine and decided to patronize Main St. Bakery & Bistro.
The first thing you see when you walk in the door at Main St. Bakery is the gorgeous display case of French confections.
You are forced to stare at these delicious pastries as you wait in line to place your lunch order, eroding away at your will power like licks on a Tootsie Pop.
After placing your order, you can either eat at a table on the bakery side, or make your way over to the beautiful dining room.
My grandma ordered a Croque-Monsieur, which is a ham and cheese sandwich as only the French can do it. This broiled, gooey sandwich is stuffed with sliced ham and cheese, topped with Gruyere cheese over a thin layer of a garlicky creme sauce, similar to an aioli. Ordinarily one sees this sandwich with a darker, crispier top crust of cheese, but the chef instructors at my culinary school would just call this an "American" version of properly cooked, because Americans tend to prefer things on the paler side as compared to European sensibilities.
I ordered the Beef Tenderloin sandwich when I saw that it would be served on a home-made black pepper brioche bread. If you follow me for long, you may come to learn that not only am I always going to select the homemade bread, but cracked black pepper is one of my weaknesses.
The sandwich featured hearty, tender slices of beef tenderloin, Gruyere cheese, tomatoes, caramelized onions, and a balsamic reduction. This balance of herbacious meat, sweet, savory onions, unctuous cheese, and bright vinegar and tomatoes was only enhanced by the slightly sweet, peppery bread.
My grandma and I opted to leave after lunch and walk around Main St. for a bit before coming back to get a bite of dessert. My grandmother had a children's book she wrote published a few years ago, and the little shop down the street has decided to sell it, so we did a little business, too. (One grandmother a published author and the other a wedding cake baker- you can see where I get it!)
I ogled the iced cookies but settled for a little sample, and selected an eclair and a "creme brulee mousse bomb" for us to split. I like to get eclairs at specialty bakeries, because an in-house made eclair is a rare thing, and a really good one is nearly extinct.
I found that while the pate a choux (eclair dough) was perfect and the filling was delicious, the frosting on top reminded me a little too much of doughnut icing. Upon tasting the mousse dessert, I concluded that I think the eclair would be an even greater success if they glazed it with the ganache that enrobed the bomb.
I was wary of anything called a "creme brulee" that did not have any hard, caramelized sugar on top, because- and I know this is super snobby, but French Patisserie is my specialty as a chef- the use of popular, fancy sounding french culinary terms that every day consumers are familiar with enough to recognize but not enough to know if it's accurate is appallingly common. Creme brulee is a cream-based custard dessert that is trademark for the "burnt sugar" hard crack caramel layer on top. People can do all kinds of variations on this dish, but if you'll pardon the term it's a bastardization to stick custard, even custard and caramel, into a dish and call it creme brulee if there isn't any crunchy burned sugar on top. If the caramel is a sauce or just a flavoring element, it's closer to flan, or in french creme caramel.
Anyway, that rant over, Main St. Bakery delivered a delicious dessert with a layer of custard between the chocolate mousse and the soft crust below. I will even give them a nod for including a layer of some kind of wafer that reminded me of the crunch on a creme brulee, which redeemed this dish enough to not technically classify as having been mis-labeled, though just barely. Still, in all fairness it was a delicious dessert and a brilliant fresh spin on two classic desserts.
So go check it out for yourself! Save room for dessert! And let me know in the comments what your favorite thing from Main St. Bakery & Bistro is.
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