Dinner at Cafe Beaujolais in Eagle Rock

For a few years now, I've been hearing about a wonderful restaurant in Eagle Rock called Café Beaujolais. I've even driven by the restaurant more than times than I can count, so when I actually had a free night to just spend time with friends, I suggested Café Beaujolais for dinner and off we went.

From the outside, it looks pretty plain with its brown paneling and green awning, but once you enter, you're in for quite a surprise. The interior of the restaurant is actually very pretty and welcoming. Warm orange-brown walls hung with a variety of French wine-inspired art posters will greet you once you step through the door. The waiters are French, charming and very attentive. While you can hear conversation throughout the restaurant, it's not deafening which allows you the chance to talk to your friends at your meal without having to yell at them.

As for the food, when I opened the menu, I was really surprised with how reasonable the prices were. Appetizers weren't more than $10. All the entrees were under $20 and desserts were only $6.95. Maybe, I've been eating out at too many expensive restaurants lately because it was nice to see that it wouldn't cost me an arm and a leg this time for dinner.

Now on to the meal itself. We started off with large chunks of French bread. I didn't think that the bread itself was that great. It seemed a little hard to me, but hey, I wasn't there for the bread, so it wasn't a big deal. A nice little touch in regards to our water is that our waiter brought us a wine glass filled with water that he would use to periodically fill up our glasses when the water was getting low.

For my starter, I ordered the soup of the day, which was a celery soup. Our waiter made a point of telling us that the soup was not made with any cream or butter. The soup I have to say was amazing. It was thick, hearty and you could definitely taste the celery. This is the kind of soup that I would love to have again with just some French bread for cooler weather.

My entrée was a New York strip steak topped with a large pat of garlic butter and that came with potatoes, beans and small baked tomato. It was cooked just right: medium with the meat retaining its pinkness once I cut into the steak and as I cut into the steak, you could see the juices coming out. I was a very happy camper. I also liked the fact that the beans and potatoes also retained a bit of firmness and weren't over cooked. Mushy veggies to me are just a waste of eating energy. I also took a bite of the Beef Borgionne, that someone else in my party ordered, and that was pretty tasty, too. The meat was quite tender.

Finally, it's dessert time. I ordered their chocolate mousse. This chocolate mousse was rich and not overly sweet. This definitely leaned more towards dark chocolate vs. milk chocolate. Given that I'm a dark chocolate fan, I was more than satisfied with my dessert choice. What I found interesting is that this chocolate mousse version was denser than I've had in the past. It was less creamy, but like I said, I still enjoyed every bite of it.

All in all, I really enjoyed Café Beaujolais and now I'm just kicking myself that I hadn't made my way to there earlier. But better late than never and now that I've discovered it, I'm definitely am going to be a repeat patron.

To see pics, go to:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/la_addict/sets/72157594242483441/

The address and info is below:

Cafe Beaujolais
1712 Colorado Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90041
(323) 255-5111