Couvant is a French place in the gorgeous Eliza Jane Hotel in the CBD. The hotel has only been around for eight years, and we went to Couvant pretty early on. I don’t remember who the chef was then, but I do remember a particular dinner there with Tom, who was so disturbed by another guest at a neighboring table that it is all I remember about the evening. The guy wasn’t threatening, but Tom was disturbed by his appearance, which I would describe as grunge cool.
It wasn’t until at least three years before we returned to Couvant, and this time it was to have the Gougères Chef Ryan Pierce was making in the kitchen. Gougères are light French cheese puffs made with choux pastry. The puff part comes from the fact that in baking, choux pastry becomes a hollow shell. I usually find this quality annoying if we are talking about eclairs or Yorkshire Pudding, but anything with cheese is all right with me. I had plenty of time to wander the hotel, checking out the bar in the lobby,
and even the library.
The night we went, the kitchen was so slow that the Gougères eclipsed the regular food, and we left with another bad taste in our mouths (pun intended). And that is a shame because the food at Couvant is actually delicious, from Day One. It is modern French with a heavy dose of hip. Fortunately, the hip part is only sometimes, like the last time I was there for an English pea salad.
This COOLinary I went with a friend, and we each got something different. We tried two of the three choices on the menu. For starters, she had the Corn Velouté, a cold soup with speck and Esplette peppers for contrast. I ordered the Creole Tomato Tartine, with whipped goat cheese and a citrus vinaigrette on toasted baguette slices. For entrees, we both skipped the steak tips, choosing a Shrimp à l’orange with braised fennel and crostini, and a Crawfish and Mushroom Vol-au-Vent, with tarragon Crème frâiche. A little salad of mixed lettuces with a light vinaigrette was on this plate.
The soup was chilled, which my friend found a bit unsettling. She is not a fan of cold soups, but became a convert in this sitting. She loved the corn flavor and the silky texture of the soup, declaring it refreshing on a hot summer day by the end of the course. The Esplette peppers were okay with her, but not the speck. She found it chewy and distasteful. But mostly confusing.
She was much more enthusiastic about the plate in front of me. The tartine reminded me more of bruschetta on sight. It came as two thickish slices of baguette covered with cherry tomato halves (thereby negating the Creole tomato reference). Herbes de Provence flavored the goat cheese, and a citrus vinaigrette was incorporated into this.
I am not a fan of whipped goat cheese, so this was lost on me. (That’s what happens in menus this limited.) But I do love the other elements of this dish, so I gave my friend the goat cheese after tasting it. Nice flavor, but that texture puts me off every time. I realize I must be an anomaly, because it is everywhere.
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The entrees were spectacular. In this course, I preferred hers. She ordered the Crawfish and Wild Mushroom Vol-au-Vent. I am crazy about Vol-au-Vents any time, anywhere, but I was intrigued by the Shrimp à l’orange. I should have let her order that and had a taste of it.
The Vol-au-Vent pastry itself was impossibly flaky, further fueling my plate envy. The crawfish and mushrooms teemed out of the top. Beside the pastry cup was a puddle of sauce with a tarragon flavor. This was divine. It took me a little bit to love tarragon with seafood, but I am a fan. This was a marvelous dish.
I did like the Shrimp à l’orange as well. The slices of braised fennel were thin and pretty (I just like to look at sliced fennel), sitting in a light citrusy sauce. The shrimp themselves were simply beautiful, arranged nicely in a row, and stuffed into this dish rather artfully alongside the crostini. They were seasoned exactly right, not too much of anything, and were the ideal size, in my view. (Meaning one bite, or two if you are polite. Not these mega things requiring cutting three times.)
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I inquired about the chef I remembered, who had left over a year ago. Since then, there have been three chefs, and the current one came to say hi. He is from Venezuela and had just come from a nearby Japanese place. Our waitress was from South Africa. I wasn’t expecting lunch to be such a multi-cultural immersion.
But back to what we did expect: French food. We sat there as people trickled in, marveling at how delicious this food was, how cool a space it was, and wondering why there are always so few people there. Too bad.