Steak frites: does what it says on the box

If you’re after a clas­sic and hearty meal, then we hearti­ly rec­om­mend you hoof it to Le Met­ro­pol­i­tan on Cuba Street. In fact, we sug­gest you go there on Mon­day March 14 espe­cial­ly when they’re hav­ing a fundrais­er for Christchurch. How about I tell you about the din­ner I had there recent­ly in order to whet your appetite?

A man friend of mine had recent­ly had a some­what crap­pyass week, so I told him I’d take him out for din­ner, and sug­gest­ed Le Met­ro­pol­i­tan because I had a mas­sive crav­ing for their steak with bone mar­row sauce. As it hap­pened, that’s no longer on the menu, but that’s how things go.

We start­ed out with two aper­i­tifs and some olives for $18 (that’s a sav­ing of $6 for those of you look­ing at the menu prices). It was a shame that the eager young French wait­er deliv­ered our drinks to the wrong table, and then when he realised his mis­take, he had to con­fis­cate the olives that the oth­er cou­ple had thought were gratis. Their loss was our gain. The olives were nice mari­nad­ed, with­out any par­tic­u­lar one flavour. The Madame Rouge aper­i­tif was indeed porty, and the one whose name escapes me tast­ed like Peach Schnapps should taste if it was­n’t all chem­i­cal­ly. I wish that the drinks had been served ice cold instead of on ice, or at least that the ice had been big­ger, because it melt­ed very quick­ly and watered down the taste some­what.

Ahh well, onwards and upwards. We chose a Côtes du Rhône Shi­raz to drink, even though we were warned it was­n’t a par­tic­u­lar­ly bold wine, fig­ur­ing we’d get some­thing more boistrous halfway through our mains, and ordered gar­lic bread and mains. The gar­lic bread came on sour dough, cut into thick batons and soaked through with but­ter. It went per­fect­ly with our wine and crude con­ver­sa­tion.

For a main course, I went with the Entrecôte de Boeuf sauce poivre, which you might know bet­ter as 300grams of prime Angus Scotch Fil­let with a green pep­per sauce, and fries. As you can see by the pic­ture, it was exact­ly that. Served on the rare side of medi­um rare, it had a love­ly char­grill on, and the fat was espe­cial­ly suc­cu­lent. The fries were crispy and salty and deli­cious. My friend went with Lapin d’ag­neau pique, which is pan roast­ed anchovy-stud­ded leg of lamb on a fric­as­see of cour­get and basil with Pern­od jus. I’m not an anchovy per­son, but the mout­ful I tried seemed nice enough. The wait­ress sug­gest­ed the lam bwas a fair­ly small por­tion, so he also ordered a side of roast­ed kumara ala Legion­naire. I believe that trans­lates into “deli­cious­ness with a shit­load of but­ter”. Despite my moun­tain of frites, I felt it nec­es­sary to keep per­form­ing qual­i­ty con­trol on the kumara, espe­cial­ly as we could­n’t fig­ure out what spice it was on them.

After that hot pro­tein injec­tion, we knew we need­ed more, espe­cial­ly since we still had half a bot­tle of our sec­ond wine to drink, anoth­er Côtes du Rhône, this time a blend, and like the oth­er one an easy $40. Nat­u­ral­ly, we called for fro­mage. The wait­ress rat­tled off about sev­en kinds of cheese, not all of which I knew. It would have been nice to have been able to view the cheeses like they do at Ambe­li, but instead we took her word for it that the camen­bert was about to start crawl­ing, that the roque­fort was creamy, and then we asked her to just pick a hard cheese to com­ple­ment our selec­tion. We end­ed up with a nut­ty Comté, which was deli­cious. In fact, all the cheeses were. Picky me might have pre­ferred a sim­ple crack­er to the bread the cheeses were served, giv­en that it was after din­ner, but I can’t com­plain about the mus­ca­tels.

Nor­mal peo­ple would have stopped there, but if you’ve ever had Creme Brulee from La Met­ro­pol­i­tan, you’d know that it’s impos­si­ble not to order it. Behold:

The choco­late mousse my friend had was made from good-qual­i­ty choco­late, but lack­ing the splash of alco­hol that makes choco­late mousse tru­ly great. Luck­i­ly though, he had sher­ry and I had an Arman­gac XO in order to cor­rect that imbal­ance. At $250, it was­n’t a cheap night out, but it was def­i­nite­ly mem­o­rable. We rec­om­mend it — and if you’re daunt­ed by the price, it might help to know that if you stick to the ‘Clas­sic Selec­tions’ on the menu, you can get three cours­es for $45.