Western Daily Press (Saturday)
Food and atmosphere offer a taste of France in Frome
THE stained glass and tiled Edwardian frontage still has the sign from when this was a grocery and provisions store serving Frome locals, but step inside and you are transported to the brasseries of France.
Bistro Lotte - named after owner Charlotte Evans - opened last year in a shop that for years sold car parts. It’s now an authentic French restaurant beneath Charlotte’s boutique hotel, the Frome Townhouse, with its six stylish bedrooms.
Perched at the top of winding Catherine Street with its vintage emporiums, antiques dealers, contemporary fashion shops and art galleries, Bistro Lotte is perfectly located in the heart of this Somerset town’s ever-growing Bohemian quarter.
With original tiles, high ceilings, ornate mirrors and clotted cream and sage-coloured tongue and groove wall panels, it has that timeless look you get from backstreet French brasseries.
Behind the bar, a hipster with a Breton T-shirt and trousers that stopped a long way from his trainers was mixing cocktails when I arrived on an airless summer evening.
Despite it only being Tuesday, I had the foresight to book a table, which turned out to be wise as the place was soon packed with locals, and staff were turning people away by 7.30pm.
The menu reads like a greatest hits of French brasserie classics. For starters, there are snails in garlic butter, a twice-baked Gruyère and chive soufflé and an artery-hardening tartiflette made with Reblochon cheese, bacon and cream.
Main courses include moules frites, steak frites, boeuf Bourguignon and bouillabaisse. There’s also an intriguing vegetarian dish called petatou - a summery combination of griddled courgettes, broad beans, potato and goat’s cheese with pea and mint sauce.
There really wasn’t a dish on the menu I’m not drawn to but I looked to the board of daily specials for my starter of smoked salmon and king prawn platter (£9.50).
There were five fridge-cold prawns and a few slices of salmon with two dry, anaemic triangles of toast and a ruffle of dry, undressed salad. It was served on the sort of wooden chopping board students might get as part of their moving in present at the first year of university.
For a dish commanding £9.50, it’s disappointing and not the greatest test of the kitchen. It’s ultimately a dish you could rustle up after a trolley dash around the fridges of your local Waitrose.
Things improved
considerably with the main course of gigot of lamb with tarragon and red wine (£15.50).
A gigot is essentially a leg steak with a central bone, which can make for tricky carving and the precise and steady knife skills of a surgeon if you don’t want to end up with meat juices splashing your crisp white linen shirt.
The Bistro Lotte chefs buy their meat from the family butcher next door to the restaurant and the lamb is beautifully cooked and full-flavoured. It’s served with a really good, properly garlicky dish of Dauphinoise potatoes which is golden and blistered on top.
There is also a portion of greens - mostly buttered peas and cabbage - although you can ask for a salad if you are honing a beach body for the summer holidays.
To finish, a classic French apple tart (£5.50) looks the part with its glazed and sticky overlapping slices of pomme although the pastry is a touch soft and claggy rather than boasting the expected crisp buttery snap. It also had a faintly onion flavour, as if it had been sliced with the wrong knife.
By now the candlelit room was humming with conversation and laughter as diners tucked into steak frites and supremes of chicken in wild mushroom and Noilly Prat sauce.
The atmosphere was decidedly more Français than Frome and although this was a meal of two halves with some uneven cooking, it was hard not to fall for its considerable charms and I’d certainly go back.
RATING
3./5