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Francine Bistro
(207) 230-0083
55 Chestnut Street, Camden
www.francinebistro.com
Hospitality-Great service from servers proud to work here
Open for dinner Tuesday through Saturday 5:30-10
Entrées $22 to $25
Reservations recommended
A fabulous place to eat
After being told over and over to try Francine, I could only imagine it must be good. When I dug into my redfish with foraged mushrooms, crab, and green tomato chutney, with potatoes dyed green by parsley, I understood that word-of-mouth spoke the truth; the food is a wonder.
A corn soup with scallops and a circle of basil oil also pleased the whole table, though we could have done with a cup instead of the big bowl we were served. Beside us the chef's parents were enjoying an anniversary dinner, and his mother, sounding bemused, said, "That's the best soup I've ever had." On another evening, another soup would have been white corn with chorizo ($7).
Another entrée, roast pork loin with apple-rosemary puree, pistachio slaw, and beets, was also built too large, making the desire to consume it all a painful conflict between discomfort and greed. It looked great, with a ring of parsley cream so green it was psychedelic. Maybe it's not the chef's problem if his food is so good you eat too much of it. The combination of flavors in every dish made the best gustatory sense, persuading us all that we were getting to know a place we'd want to return to. Steak frites ($23); braised short ribs ($24) with apple, horseradish, watercress, and chèvre gratin; and seared halibut ($26) with foraged mushrooms have appeared on the fall menu.
A lemon cake with lemon icing jumped onto our taste buds with singing lemon, and the roasted figs with butterscotch pudding ice cream that our friends had decided not to order-imagining they could restrain themselves-suffered repeated attack from every spoon at the table.
Chef-owner Brian Hill and his partner, Lindsey, who took Francine over after working here for a year, have made their bistro a place to travel to. Their chewy, dense homemade bread makes it all obvious from the first bite.