La Villa is full of quiet surprises
Despite a few kinks, French restaurant makes for admirable addition to Montrose
Head cheese? Really?
I stared at La Villa’s spare little menu in astonishment. In Houston, French (or French-ish) restaurants play it safe, clinging to tried-and-true dishes that function as a shorthand for the wealth and quirks of the whole cuisine. Escargot is about as wild as it gets here.
I had to give props to La Villa’s chef, Kevin d’Andréa, for offering this venerable example of French charcuterie, traditionally a jellied terrine studded with head meat. It was the last thing I expected from this 10-month-old Riviera-themed restaurant on Montrose Boulevard, whose Instagram I’d noted featured Pretty Young Things by the limoload and whose crisp white and marine-blue interior featured a DJ booth patterned like Louis Vuitton luggage.
By the time I got around to ordering the dish on my second visit, however, Houston reality had set in. Its name had been changed. Now it was “Crispy French Delicacy.”
Instead of the usual sliceable slab, this head cheese was a big trembly square that had been lightly singed on its sides. Not exactly crispy, but it tasted al
most vertiginously porky, tender cheek meat alternating with chewier cracklings and shaky rivers of soft fat. It was not a dish for the faint of heart.
My dining companion recoiled, but I kind of liked it: the deep pork savor, the trippy textures and — best of all — its ingenious accompaniment of a parsleytinted aioli mousse that jumped with tones of mustard and shallot and cornichons. It was so good I ended up eating it by the spoonful, like some exhilarating savory dessert.
Let that head cheese stand for the quiet surprise I kept experiencing at this promising restaurant. La Villa has its flaws, starting with a dramatic over-reliance on truffles for effect and some execution bobbles that were apparent only on a Tuesday, after the restaurant’s day of rest. But it’s a nice addition to the Montrose neighborhood, and it’s the first time I’ve really enjoyed myself in this space since Aries closed there in 2007 — to be followed by Pic, Russo’s Café Anthony, 43 Brasserie, Brasserie Max and Julie, and Cafe Azur.
Houston has come to expect French food in this location, but it hasn’t always been good French food. But d’Andrea, who took over from La Villa’s opening chef in January, brings a deft, contemporary touch and a real gift for deploying acid to brighten his dishes. He was a finalist on France’s version of “Top Chef ” in 2015 and has worked in elite kitchens from Paris to London to Las Vegas. He is personable and funny, with an armful of swooping tattoos, and I’ll bet he was great on TV.
The chef ’s ideas can be fun. Instead of presenting escargots in their usual garlic-butter bath, he scatters them on a cushiony sourdough flatbread softened with intense green parsley pesto. Shaved cremini mushrooms and springy greens add texture; translucent slices of summer truffle bring the aroma. The round, crusty flatbread is made in-house, as are all the baked goods — right down to the goodquality Viennoiserie available at La Villa’s exceptionally pleasant a la carte brunch.
Saturday and Sunday noons here might call for that snail flatbread or a fluffy French omelet threaded with Gruyère cheese and precision-cut chives. In a town where omelets often disappoint, this one does not. There’s festive Cremant by the glass, plus a short list of champagnes that includes some reasonably priced bottles. With sun streaming into the light, bright room and an umbrella’d patio for dining outdoors, it’s a setting lovely enough to compensate for the oh-soHouston view of a CVS.
An L-shaped bar inside welcomes solo diners and walk-ins, and guess what? Those stools of clear, basket-woven plastic that catch the light so prettily are far more comfortable than they look. They actually flex, as unlikely as that seems.
I can picture dropping in here for a glass of wine and a slice of well-made pateen-croute rendered luxurious with mi-cuit foie gras, served with a bright jumble of lightly pickled vegetables. Or perhaps for a wonderfully beefy steak frites centered on grass-fed bavette, sliced to reveal a precise medium-rare center. This sirloin relative has the kind of intense flavor Texans love, heightened with a small pitcher of beef juices in which to dip the reasonably good thin-cut fries.
Of course, there’s a truffle-fries option on this truffle-mad menu. But even when the chef deploys actual shaved truffle, and when he infuses his own truffle oil using the real thing, their repeated and aggressively aromatic appearances begin to seem more like a gimmick than a luxurious treat. I mean, truffle is even in the butter served with house-baked bread and in the punchy aioli they’ll bring you to eat with your french fries.
I admired the deeply funky savor and chewy texture of d’Andréa’s liquidy truffle risotto, and I loved the fact that he used vegetable stock to make the dish vegetarian. But with so many other truffle applications jostling for attention, the dish seemed less special than it deserved to. I hoped, in my Houston heart, that the chef wasn’t truffle-izing to dazzle the American rubes.
The dinner menu is short and fairly pricey, focused mostly on the seafood that dovetails with the Riviera theme. (D’Andréa himself is from southwestern France, where charcuterie and truffles reign.) There’s a pristine, tartly marinated snapper ceviche with the small-cut texture of a tartare, herbal and cool for summer; and a clever salad of huge, poached prawns — the size of tiny lobsters — on a bed of quinoa dressed to resemble a frisky tabbouli. Aside from a curious disconnect between the undressed shrimp and the lively quinoa, it was terrific.
Less successful was a so-called carpaccio of pale “heirloom” tomatoes so skillfully garnished and dressed, I almost didn’t mind that the tomatoes involved were none too flavorful. And I wondered, not for the first time, where d’Andréa finds his immaculate watercress. It’s impressive. I wish I could say the same for the tough, colorful shards of watermelon radish that decorate too many dishes.
If the restaurant can attract the kind of clientele it deserves, d’Andréa may be able to expand his reach, rather than axing such ideas as house-made linguine with clams in their shells because guests won’t order them. I’d love to see him do more unusual dishes like his lamb shoulder, confited for seven hours and served in a loose roll alongside gnocchi glazed in jus, lemon confit and some strangely muted pequillo peppers of which I expected more. It was good. But it could be great. So could the restaurant itself.
The service has been notably good and intelligent, save for one crazy Sunday when brunch was unexpectedly mobbed, and staff was short. Yet as of now, the kitchen, so admirable in many ways, does not deliver consistently.
One day may produce an ethereal strawberry-rhubarb tart flanged with delicate meringue and lined with gin-and-rhubarb gel; another may yield an expensive and stodgy choux pastry dessert for two that seems to be at least a day old.
But then comes one of those moments when my affection for this restaurant is rekindled. A bowl of creamy rice pudding “a la grandmère” appears, as if d’Andréa’s grandmother had thought to swirl the dish with bold salted caramel and candied pistachios. Simple and lush and indelible, it’s exactly the kind of dish that will bring me back.