Bouchon

By Heidi Knapp Rinella

LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL

Somehow it seems a little incongruous among the trappings of the Venezia Tower at The Venetian-- all of that Italianate schmaltz, and then there's a French bistro with a black-and-white tiled floor and zinc countertops and subtly painted frescoed walls. Not that that really matters, I guess, because, truth be told, Bouchon is more Paris Las Vegas than Paris, France, so it would be a little incongruous no matter where it was plunked in the Las Vegas Valley.

But who really cares? The menu is classic bistro, the experience is so enjoyable on the whole that if chef Thomas Keller has taken a few liberties in terms of tweaking it all to be more in keeping with American tastes, well, more power to him.

Here's one thing that's without question authentic -- or as close as is possible for an American restaurant: the bread. Anyone who's traveled to France (or maybe even watched the Travel Channel) knows about the wonders of French bread, and those are in full evidence at Bouchon. Dinner starts with a pain fantasie -- a loaf of classic "French" bread, the dough formed into roll-sized pieces that are assembled at angles into sort of a serpentine formation. Plunked onto the paper-topped tablecloth and accompanied by a ramekin of butter and one of toasted pistachios in the shell, the extremely hard-crusted (that's a good thing) loaf with a light interior was a great way to start.

But the pleasures of French bread are many, and that comes through at Bouchon, too. Our charcuterie board ($16.50, and easily shared by two) was accompanied by a short, slim baguette scored into slices whose crust was a little more gentle than that of the pain fantasie, in keeping with the other components.

Which were: four selections from the restaurant's charcuterie assortment, thinly sliced and arrayed across the board. What were they? I wish I could tell you, but members of the French charcuterie world are legion, and the guy who brought the board didn't pause to tell us; our server was going to find out but got distracted. At any rate, one selection was flecked with green peppercorns, one flavored with red pepper, one small with chunks of fat, one larger with smaller chunks of fat. One thing we knew: All were delicious, especially when eaten with the pickled onions and pickled gherkins (slightly larger than the traditional French cornichon) that accompanied them.

Poulet Roti ($29.50) -- or roast chicken to you and me -- is a bistro classic and one we couldn't pass up, and it was perfect in the way that a roasted chicken can be. The skin crackled, the meat was moist and far more flavorful than your standard American chicken, and with the roasted fingerling potatoes and corn served with it, it was one of the standards that the French do so well.

Truite aux Amandes ($28.50) was another, but in this case the execution was less traditional. The whole trout had been split and roasted and served with tail off but head on (eyes down, in case you're squeamish). On top of the meat was a layer of almost-crisp French green beans generous enough to give the impression that this was a healthful dish, topped by an equally prodigious amount of sliced toasted almonds that did the same, all of it drizzled with brown butter that stuck a beautiful pin into that nutritional-fantasy balloon.

Leave a French restaurant without dessert? Mais, non! I was holding out for the profiterole, but the person who was going to be eating most of it was pulling for the Mousse au Chocolat Noir ($9), or dark-chocolate mousse, and it was a little pot of silken sin, accompanied by some perfect little oh-so-delicate Langues de Chat cookies, which I'm not going to translate because it sounds a lot better in French.

Service throughout was great. Our only regret? That it was too warm outside to dine on the patio. That, my friends, would have made our dinner at Bouchon a truly transcendent experience.

Las Vegas Review-Journal reviews are done anonymously at Review-Journal expense. Contact Heidi Knapp Rinella at 383-0474 or e-mail her at hrinella@ reviewjournal.com.