Chez Albert
27 South Pleasant St., Amherst, 413-253-3811
Reservations recommended.
Hours: Tue.-Sun. 5:30 p.m. to 10 p.m.
Entrées to $25.
If I could eat anywhere in the Valley, it would be here—because it's French and because Monsieur Emanuel Proust, the manager and front-of-house man, has his head and his heart in the right place. I brought a friend, a Francophile, here to celebrate her recent real estate coup in Florida. It was a busy Friday night and nobody could go into Chez Albert without a reservation. At our table by the door, we witnessed Monsieur rush over every time someone came in and say, "No, impossible, sorry. Try us at 9:30. Sorry, goodbye." You'd think we were on the South Bank of the Seine, not South Pleasant Street.
Time for drinks: Monsieur came over and said something in French. I said "Red" and he said, "OK, Merlot, Malbec, Cabernet, Pinot, Syrah, Rose," sizing me up as a by-the-glass-girl without bothering to mention Grenache ($110 a bottle). We ordered from a list of 43 bottles of Rouge, around 10 bottles of Blanc and six Sparkling—all French, bien sur.
Monsieur recited the special appetizers: tiger shrimp with fiddleheads in champagne vinaigrette and a field green salad with arugula. I chose the tiger shrimp and detected a bit of truffle oil in the dressing. "Impossible," cried Proust when I asked him about it. He had already denied my request that chef please put a couple of fiddleheads on the salad special. "Absolutely not," said Monsieur. "He [the chef] simply will not do that."
The shrimp were big and delicious, fanned out on a bed of bib lettuce, and the fiddleheads were the essence of spring, cooked in a bit of brown butter. "Everything tastes great in brown butter," said a woman at the next table. The place is small and tables are squeezed rather close to one another in the little bistro that looks out on the common.
We asked Monsieur what the heck was he doing in Amherst anyway, a guy with this much gustatory sophistication, and he said, "A woman, of course. I followed a woman to Amherst."
On that note we drank to women and tried the escargot a l'Albert—different than the usual garlic-, butter- and parsley-infused plate of snails. This version had a velvety flavor, rich and dark. My friend insisted that the pate de la maison is the best test of a French restaurant, so we ordered the pate de foie—Chez Albert's version was made with chicken livers, cream and port and served with tiny pickles, also known as cornichons, and a lovely, crusty bread from El Jardin of Holyoke. The dish could not have been more authentic. For two of us, the three appetizers could have been more than enough, but we had a job to do. When Monsieur was too busy to turn people away, we filled in for him. A man and his wife looked in, saw our dismissive faces and fled.
Because of its description I ordered the wild salmon with potato blini and beet crème. Blini are good with caviar on New Year's, but not so well paired with wild salmon. Glistening on the plate and flexing its upstream muscles, the wild thing tasted of a satisfyingly earthy diet. Our other dish was the leg of lamb with cured olives and polenta. My friend pronounced her lamb perfect although she mostly picked at the olives, so I was forced to soldier on and sample the remains: tender slices of lamb, buttery and rare, not at all gamey. It was perfect with the sweet, plump olives and a nicely prepared, crisp and light polenta on the side.
Because we had been so kind as to assist Monsieur in bidding adieu to diners without reservations, we were granted a free creme brulee—perfection in its creamy underbelly and crusty top. It was the best crème brulée anywhere, and I've had it everywhere. All in a night's work.
