Le Relais de Venise New York

Le Relais De Venise L’Entrecote is a unique French restaurant located in midtown Manhattan on Lexington Ave. Introduced to us, by a good friend who used to live in New York City for many years and frequently visited the place.

So, on a recent trip to New York, after we worked up an appetite running around the Metropolitan museum, we craved some meat & potatoes and decided to go to there for dinner. We ignored the cold and the rain and made it to the restaurant around 6:45pm.

The restaurant is big with plenty of seating, but I don’t think they take reservations. Nevertheless, we got seated right away.  The walls were adorned with Venetian scenes and the waitresses were dressed in French maid uniforms that added to the whole ambiance of the place. The atmosphere had a casual European feel to it, and the tables were nicely dressed with colorful tablecloths, covered with white paper on the top – something you see very often in Europe. We couldn’t help but notice the close proximity of about a foot between tables.

What is different about this restaurant is its simple and unique concept – for a prex-fixe price of $28.75 dollars, they only serve one kind of a savory salad and one entrée for lunch and dinner together with a complimentary glass of house wine. Other choices of wine and dessert are extra.

The waitress came quickly and she was friendly and helpful explaining the restaurant’s concept. The only thing that we had to decide, was how we wanted our steaks cooked. We had a choice between rare, medium or well . For some reason, they don’t do medium-rare.

Our dining experience at Le Relais De Venise started with some French bread and a green salad topped with walnuts and light mustard vinaigrette dressing accompanied with a glass of house Bordeaux.

Next, came the steak and frites. Our first impression of the meal was that the portions were kind of small but we dove into our plates anxiously. To our surprise, they don’t serve ketchup, mayonnaise or butter for the frites.

The steak was thinly sliced and cooked to perfection, covered with a very tasty secret recipe sauce. Throughout our meal, we tried to guess the ingredients of this delicious sauce, and arrived to  conclusion  that it tasted a bit like the sauce that’s served with escargot. The frites were homemade style and went well with the sauce. When we were done with our food, our waitress came by and to our delight, instead of picking up our empty plates, she surprised us by filling them up with a second serving of steak and frites. We were quiet happy for that especially since we thought the initial portion was kind of small.

 

For the vegetarian in our party, there was the option of assorted cheeses and dessert of choice or salad, but she opted for a double salad instead of cheese.  There was also a large selection of desserts to choose from, but we ordered the profiteroles au chocolat. They were delightful.

We left very satisfied and thrilled by the overall experience. We are looking forward to visiting the original restaurant in Paris this summer.

The original Le Relais de Venise opened up in Paris over fifty years ago by Paul Gineste de Saurs who purchased an Italian Restaurant and decided to retain its Venetian décor. He offered his customers no choice on the menu but two French bistro favorites. A salad to start and steak frites with a secret recipe sauce made with herbs, spices & other secret ingredients. The restaurant became a success and a Parisian Institution. Eventually, they branched out to New York, and London, His daughter Helene Godilot manages all new overseas openings and ensures that all are identical to the original in Paris from the décor, down to secret sauce recipe.