Artisanal Bistro

A friend of Jeff's who used to live in NYC recommended Artisanal Bistro to us and I am so glad he did! This French bistro was my idea of heaven because they had a huge variety of cheese and wine. As one review, hanging on their wall, said, "it is like Disney World for cheese lovers." They even have a fromagerie in the restaurant.


The best way to get the most variety into your visit is to try their wine and cheese fights. They have 12 different cheese flights, with three cheeses each, that you can get with or without their recommended wine pairings. Since I love cheese as much as I do, we had a cheese flight for an appetizer and another one for dessert. All the wines and cheeses we tried were fabulous but the absolute best pairing was onthe Fromager's Selection Flight. I didn't love either the Epoisses, a cow's milk cheese from France, or its paired wine, a French Sauternes, on their own. The washed- rind cheese was oozy and stinky. The wine, a Chateau Padouen '06, was sweeter than I normally like but when put together with the cheese, the flavor was absolute magic in my mouth. The flavors married together unlike any other wine and cheese pairing I have ever experienced. I will be recreating that magic on my next cheese board at home.
For the main course I got the special of the day, Bouillabaisse. It was everything a good bouillabaisse should be with lots of seafood- shrimp, scallops, mussels, and fish-with fennel, potatoes and a very flavorful tomato seafood stock. Jeff got the Mussels Frites, mussels steamed in white wine and garlic with a side of crispy French fries. The mussels were good but we both agreed that they were not as good as our favorite steamed mussels at Bin 112. My stew was served with a garlicky aioli on the side. We ended up using it as a dip for Jeff's mussels and fries and it was great.
As I already mentioned, we got another cheese plate for dessert but Jeff had a hard time deciding since there was a chocolate tart with salted caramel ice cream. He isn't a huge chocolate fan but ever since he tried salted caramel ice cream at the California Grill, he can't pass it up when he sees it on a menu. Luckily, the waitress was kind enough to bring him 2 scoops to try so we didn't have to get another whole dessert (since I was obviously not giving up my second cheese plate!) The ice cream was wonderful but I was in heaven with my Epoisse and Sauternes magic.

We will definitely return here on our next NYC trip. We didn't even get to try their famous fondues. Our dinner was so good and the menu was so tempting we debating going back the next day for lunch but we ended up not being able to make it.

-Joy