Sarah found the dimly lit, rustic, wood-laden space romantic. Nick doesn't find French bistros romantic, but he likes the charm. And Chez Albert was no exception. Yes, in Amherst, Mass., the chalkboard with the daily specials, the copper everywhere, the cheap foreign beers-all are affectations. But they're well-executed ones.
The Sunday brunch menu was decidedly French, replete with dishes like pasta with rabbit, fishcakes and smoked trout. Even seemingly "American" breakfast dishes, like an egg, ham and cheese sandwich, skewed French: Served on a croissant with Gruyère, lightly scrambled egg and ham, this sandwich is the Egg McMuffin's crazy second cousin once removed (you know, the one everyone asks about with a hint of sadness).
Our meal began with a round of fresh-squeezed orange juice ($3) for Nick. It was, in a word, phenomenal. Sweet, pulpy, a little tart, it tasted (and looked) fresh-squeezed. Sarah opted for the hair-of-the-dog-that-bit-her-namely, a mimosa ($7), with the same high-quality OJ. (Evidently, she had no qualms about drinking so soon after Jesus' resurrection-not that anyone at the table of Jews and nonobservant Christians would have noticed anyway.)
Sarah isn't a good enough Jew to forgo a croissant breakfast sandwich with beef short ribs, an egg over easy and Gruyère ($8). If you're going to break the rules, she figured, you might as well go hog wild.
Unfortunately, the sandwich was too unwieldy (and immense) to handle as you would your McMuffin, so Sarah took to knife and fork. The short rib was as tender as Sarah's mother's brisket, the egg perfectly cooked, the croissant toasted just enough. The addition of the restaurant's homemade hot sauce made the dish almost transcendent.
Nick isn't a very good Jew, either-hence the ham and Gruyère omelet ($8). Alas, he was disappointed. The ham was plentiful enough, and the Gruyère north of boring old cheddar but south of overpowering Roquefort, but the edges were burned, and the middle wasn't moist. Whether this had something to do with the chef trying to get 12 dishes out at the same time (we were dining as a large party), we don't know. But the job of a restaurant is to cook an omelet better than Nick can at home; Chez Albert (a French bistro, no less) failed that test.
Dan's French toast turned out to be another French foible. While it looked beautiful with its raspberry coulis and confectioner's sugar topping, the middle was both uncooked and untouched by the egg coating-as dry as the day-old slice of brioche before hitting the pan. Better was the pork confit hash that accompanied an order of eggs, and combined diner sensibilities with haute cuisine technique.
However, those diner sensibilities did not extend to the restaurant's unwillingness to accommodate Sarah's mom, who asked meekly whether she could substitute toast for potatoes. The waitress deferred to the chef. The chef said no bread for you! (or so we think; all she got was potatoes and no explanation).
We probably won't return to Chez Albert in the next month; we just don't have the time or money. Yet it wasn't as expensive as we thought it would be, and for all the little things it got wrong, there were other little things-the creative bathroom wallpapering, the chalkboard listing specials, the old bank vault behind the kitchen-that pleased us. (Perhaps none more so than the $2 bottles of Pabst, which looked delightfully incongruous next to foreign favorites like De Koninck.)
With more time on our hands, and with the upcoming opening of a movie theater in downtown Amherst, we'd certainly return to Chez Albert for a night out on our town.