Le Jardin

This is the second reincarnation of Le Jardin. The first Le Jardin was a sorry excuse for a French restaurant. It was more like a hang out for the French mafia than for a place to go for good French food. I am not sure who now owns the new Le Jardin but my friend is a fan and he is the one who told us we should try it out again.

The nice aspect of Le Jardin is their garden/ terrace dinning area. This has not changed from the past restaurant. We decided to eat outside since it was not too hot.

The amuse bouche of three types of hams with different spreads on toasted baguettes. They were ok but nothing memorable.

My starter was a Warm goat cheese salad. The salad had a big portion of lettuce accompanied with four warm goat cheese on toasted baguettes. The salad did not have enough salad dressing to coat the lettuce. The goat cheese was lacking the strong cheese flavor I was expecting & used to. The goat cheese was too dry and I needed to drizzle olive oil on it to give it some moisture and flavor. I did not know that you could mess up such a simple salad.

My friend had the Tuna tartare for his starter. The tuna tartare was a good & right portion. The tuna was of good quality and it was chopped chunky (which is a good thing). The flavors were balanced yet not overwhelming so to not hide the tuna flavor. A very nice dish.

My main dish was Roasted lamb. The two slices of lamb were generous. The lamb was moist and tender. It had good flavor…good quality lamb. The sides to accompany the lamb was pan fried potatoes which were too oily and a roasted endive which was burnt beyond recognition (take a look at the back of the photo…something very black is sticking out). Too bad for the potatoes and endive…the lamb itself made this dish ok.

My friend's main dish was Carbonnade a la flamande. A traditional Belgian sweet-sour beef & onion stew made with beer and seasoned with thyme and bay. The beef was so dry which was very surprising since this was a stew…meaning the beef should have been cooked long enough so that it would be tender…apparently not. The french fries were actually good; crispy outside and tender inside. Another mediocre dish.

Overall; we were disappointed with the hype our friend made about the 'new' Le Jardin. Maybe we ordered the wrong things. Maybe we came at a bad night…who knows, but the food was mediocre. There was at least one thing wrong with the dishes we ordered except the Tuna tartare. We did not order the most complicated dishes, yet they were not able to execute the most basic dishes well.

The service was professional and good. The ambiance is not bad. The prices are really reasonable. With all these good thing going for Le Jardin…its a wonder that the food cannot keep up. What a shame!

Address: Thonglor soi 11 Sukhumvit 55

Bankgok 1o110