Café Presse–Another Friend

(this is an initial review, if you would like to read a follow up- click here)

The rule about new restaurants is never judge a restaurant within the first two months of it opening. It’s sort of like judging a writer by her teen-age diaries– unless you want to wince, you don’t do it. So it goes for a new restaurant: each kitchen, each member of the staff, each table and each dish is always in need of being slightly edited.

Ah, but, people can’t help but talk– especially industry people.

Fortunately for Café Presse, it is owned by Jim Drohman and Joanne Herron– the same people who own Le Pichet in the Pike Place Market. Le Pichet is pretty much the same restaurant it was when it opened in 2000. Sure, there were some menu items that made their debut early on and never returned (that damn assiette de crudité which haunts me as the best pickled vegetable plate I’ve ever had) but really, the place, the attitude, the intent, has not changed.

Le Pichet reminds me of a Parisian ingénue: gamine, tight and endearingly unmoved by people who don’t understand her.

So, then there’s Café Presse (or Le Pichet 2, as people call it). From an ordering and inventory point of view, it’s a smart place: order the same produce, meats and ingredients for two different restaurants, lower your food costs and expand your profit. As for the food, the croques monsieur keeps coming up in conversation.

I can’t help but hope that Café Presse not follow Le Pichet’s lead as an instant hit. It has excellent hours and the space is beautiful, but I wonder if it could just, for the sake of being mortal, flail a little– just to evolve past the ingénue and something a little warmer. Still, it will serve the neighborhood just fine and, as someone said, it is a wonderful place for those in the restaurant industry who need to eat at 3 in the afternoon or at 10 in the evening.