Café Bouffon, Stratford Ontario, September 2023

We thought this place had changed hands, formerly Italian and now very français. Anyway it’s a nice dark-wood classy bar you walk past on the way in, and a big bustling venue with plenty of tables and lots of room. We were four sitting in a banquette booth.

Server was a young middle-aged lady who approached with the rapid-fire uninterruptable verbal introduction you sometimes get in busy places. She asked about water (Chateauneuf de tap) and told us exactly how “she” (the chef)  prepared each of the specials, and then disappeared. The menu she left was interesting with a nice selection of French bistro items.

The wine list was longish and ranked according to price, stating the name, year, grape (sometimes) and country. I looked down it and didn’t recognize anything in our $80 to $100 price range (in fact didn’t recognize anything on the list) so asked the server for suggestions. Her opinions were canned-sounding (“heavy… light… merlot-driven … earthy…) and didn’t seem to me to jibe with what I could glean from the list. I told her I wanted to think about it and identified a southern Rhône grape item from the Spanish region Priorat (“Gratavinum 2πr”) for $100 which I found absolutely delicious. It retails in Canada for about $45. The wine guy from behind the bar came over and was obviously interested and knowledgeable.

Food: the starters were a very nice beef tartare with an egg yolk on top that tasted acidic and was made with tender and tasty lentil-sized beef chunks, and then frisee salad with bacon and a deep-fried egg also intriguing and nicely dressed.

We all wanted steak frites but weren’t starving so we requested two orders to be split among the four of us. When these arrived there were two dinner plates almost completely covered with perfectly nice french fries, and three tiny slices of beef. The meat was perfectly medium rare, tender, and tasty but the quantity was minute for one person let alone two, and nothing close to what you’d expect for $49. We let the server know we weren’t happy with that and she assured us she would let the management know.

A strange mixed experience really. Very good food quality-wise plus a nice wine discovery but over-powered service delivery and a strangely-valued main course. I think you could navigate the menu differently and be quite happy with the whole thing but next time we’re in town will probably go elsewhere.

Food 9.2 service 7.0 ambience 9.1 value 6.9 peace and quiet 8.8.