FUN BUBBLES OVER AT A’BOUZY
At festive River Oaks spot, fizz and fries join classic pairings — and nearly endless bubbly options
Sitting on the expansive covered patio at champagne specialist a’Bouzy, I found it easy to feel as giddy as a 4-year-old. The weekend brunch ritual meant shiny soap bubbles flew from a machine, drifting out toward Westheimer and in under the roof, where they bounced and exploded into nothingness amid the tables.
A silvery wine bucket and a bottle of Blancs de Noir, one of more than 250 sparkling wines on an epic iPad list, arrived. As the cork popped, a gaggle of servers shouted “a’Bouzy!” in salute to the little champagne village from which the restaurant draws its name.
It’s a calculated bit of theater as apt to inspire grins as eye rolls. The fat-cheeked toddler at the next table was absolutely delighted by the noisy ceremony: Again and again he raised his arms to the ceiling with a burble, until adults all around joined him, raising their flutes and toasting his every chirp.
It’s fun here. The lightness of spirit springs from the rising mousse of bubbles in your glass, from the sense of festivity that sparkling wines have come to
embody in Western culture, from the ebullient attitude of the staff, and — not to put too fine a point on it — from some of the very best french fries in town.
A’Bouzy has made me realize that fries are underappreciated as suitable champagne accompaniments, deserving of a place right along with tried-and-truisms such as caviar and salmon and chicken-liver mousse. All those standards are offered on a’Bouzy’s agreeably snacky menu, but no matter how lush and smooth and seductive I found the house-cured wild salmon gravlax, it was the fries that stole the show.
The thinnish potato batons are not simply fried twice, the best method of producing a crunchy, well-glazed surface. They are actually frozen in the cold locker between turns through bubbling duck fat, so that they emerge with a turbocrunch.
I loved these fries plain and dunked into garlicky aioli. I even loved them tossed with a little truffle oil, a manifestation I normally abhor. (Somehow, these truffled specimens remained enticingly fragrant rather than fakey.)
But I loved the fries best served as they are during Saturday and Sunday brunch: with a sunny-side-up egg on top, so you can break open the yolk for dipping. A little egg here, a little aioli there, and the heap is gone before you know it.
I’d come here just to eat that dish. Or to chill on the patio over a dozen half-shell oysters from the Upper St. Lawrence, my favorite source, and a bottle of champagne, well priced at not too much over retail.
Maybe the bracingly crisp, tart Drappier Blanc de Quatre Blancs, with its mineral edge; or fuller, fruitier Brut Millesime 1er Cru by Gaston Chiquet, a really good grower champagne ($69); or a wellrounded Pol Roger nonvintage brut, an allaround workhorse champagne that’s a steal here at $46.
Yes, there are prestige bottles at eye-popping triple-digit prices on this list. But there are plenty of bargains and offbeat choices as well, thanks to the expertise of owner Shawn Virene, who made Clark Cooper’s Brasserie 19 such a mecca for champagne lovers. Virene seems to have imparted his enthusiasm for sparkling wines to his staff, who are either well versed enough to offer suggestions or smart enough to know when to call on someone else for help. With a list as long as this one, that matters.
Case in point: I asked my waiter, Sergio, one evening if he could steer me to a champagne that exemplified the classic style of Bouzy, where Pinot Noir (rather than Chardonnay) is the principal champagne grape. He produced a bottle of that Jean Vesselle Oiel de Perdrix (“Eye of the Partridge,” for its pale salmon blush approximating same), and it promptly became my new summer favorite for its elegant small mousse and faint, rose-petal fragrance.
If you love sparkling wines, a’Bouzy is your place. If I were in the business of rating watering holes, I would give it four stars: for its list and its wine service; its freewheeling people-watching; its highly appealing patio; its general air of celebration.
As a restaurant, however, a’Bouzy can be hit or miss. I have found the left side of the menu, where the appetizer-style dishes dwell, to be far more reliable than the pricier dinner entrees to the right. A dismally mushy lemon sole was not redeemed by brown butter, capers and a delicate parsnip purée. Chewy pucks of roasted lobster tail came with green beans in a clashing tomato sauce that overwhelmed the shellfish. It cost 40 bucks, too.
The lone main dish I found agreeable was a roasted Cornish game hen that had been cut up and set over a gentle leek fondue. It was simple and nicely cooked.
I find it safer to stick to such familiar ideas as a molded lump crab salad with avocado, which seems too bland only until the brisk jalapeño vinaigrette on its spiky little side of frisée greens kicks in; or the slightly dated “sashimi” of ahi tuna and watermelon that get an unexpected goose from a well-spiced ribbon of avocado mousse.
Good-quality slices of dense Iberico ham with coarse mustard and cornichons are always welcome. So are baked oysters with pesto fairly bristling with bacon crisps; straightforward chickenliver mousse; and mustardy prime-steak tartare.
And the weekend brunch menu holds a lovely surprise in the form of a burrata and tomato galette, its tender-crumbed pastry shell made with crème fraîche, and — if you’re lucky — its vibrant cherry tomatoes plucked right from the restaurant’s garden.
Somehow the very low-key lobster-and-bigGulf-shrimp roll seems just right with Eye of the Partridge, even though I would have doubled down on the dill and vinegar seasoning the house-made potato chips.
I wouldn’t have changed a thing about classic strawberry shortcake on a buttery biscuit, with a cloud of whipped cream. As the soap bubbles flew, and the scores of glass balls hand-tied to the dining-room ceiling swayed ever so slightly, I found myself hoping that this prime Westheimer location, between Shepherd and Kirby where Montrose lurches toward River Oaks, may at last have an occupant that will stick.
Look for me on the patio — scrolling, scrolling, scrolling through that iPad.