Rosenfeld Realty Advisors

Bistro Gastronomie – West Boca Raton

I think we are overdue for one of these and this is a good one for many reasons. Since I moved to Florida in 2001, there has never been an upscale restaurant in West Boca Raton. I think the popular but erroneous thought is that there is not enough wealth there to support such a thing. After living here for almost 13 years someone is finally giving it a shot.

This place is in a small strip center called Yamato Village Center that is the main shopping center for 2 over 55 year old residential communities on Lakeridge Blvd. That is on Yamato Rd. between Lyons Rd. and 441. The main restaurant here has always been a sort of American/BBQ place that has changed hands about 5 times over the years. It continued opening again and again to almost the same mediocre menu and food. I found out about the new place with a small blurb in the Sun Sentinel and the wife and I jumped right on it. The interior is completely redone and very clean looking, possibly too bright. They have lots of Asian paper globe lights that I really liked. We had some seats with a view of the kitchen, which I love, since you can see all the action in there. Right away we knew there were going to be problems with service when we waited for more than 15 minutes for menus. To make a long story short on the service, the maître d’ swore he was missing 2 servers and if he had them everything would have been fine. We promised to try it again despite the service and we will. Now onto the food.

When I first saw this menu online I was surprised and how large the menu was. There were lots of things that looked good and they offered 4 course prix fix menus which I am a big fan of. So I went with that and they were kind enough to let me substitute some French Onion soup instead of the salad so I was a happy camper. Started out with the duck egg rolls, which were excellent despite having the fat on the duck! They came with a homemade XO sauce which was good, sort of like A1 but tangier. The French Onion soup was really great, and then had the Maryland Crab Cake. Usually this comes with 2, but they just served one giant one here. It was very impressive and good despite having a little bit of shells in it. Wife had a salad, then went with the steak which came with some crab meat. She enjoyed both and took half of it home. Finished up with the carrot cake and wife had some strange chocolate thing which came in a coffee cup and was very dark. I stayed away from it but she enjoyed it, The carrot cake was great! While they had an impressive selection of desert wines, they didn’t offer any by the glass only by the half bottle. They did have some port by the glass though and I went with that. Discovered a good one there called Cockburn 10 year tawny, which was great despite the terribly painful name. While we really enjoyed the food here, it was very expensive. As expensive as almost any other place in town, so they are going to have to get their service problems worked out and quickly. We are going to try it once more and I am hoping it will be the second of many more trips there. I am rooting hard for these guys! I would love to know about a great restaurant find you discovered or your favorite place. Please don’t be shy or stingy – share your info! As always, thanks for reading.