Hello everyone!
We recently visited Fromage, a European style restaurant located in MRC Nagar, Chennai – specifically in Somerset Greenways. It is right next door to another cafe, Broken Bridge, within the Somerset complex. After quite a long time, we had cause for a small celebration and wanted to go out for dinner. Sadly, we were delayed by a plum cake that kept baking and baking forever in the oven. 😀 So by the time we reached the restaurant, it was exactly 10 pm. We called to confirm that the restaurant would be open when we arrived, and they said they took the last orders until 10:45 pm, so we were good!
Ambience
The restaurant is quite small in size, and decorated the classic European style. It has beautiful interiors and a very relaxed ambience, with soft grey being the dominant colour. Patterned baroque-ish style floor tiles and add to the European theme.
Another hard-to-miss feature is the repeated reference to cheese via wall art that is prominently displayed throughout the restaurant. It is called ‘Fromage’ (French for ‘cheese’) after all ! 😀
Food
They have a menu that has a combination of French, Italian and Mexican dishes. We were served complimentary bread croutons with a variety of dips (4 in total), once we placed the order. The accompanying dips were chipotle, red chilli, honey mustard and sour cream (or tzatziki maybe?). They were all pretty yummy and great with the bread, helping us stave away our hunger pangs until the starters arrived.
For starters, we ordered the Smoked Tomato and Basil Soup, served with a slice of warm bread with pesto, which was fantastic. Creamy, fresh and really not greasy – just the way I preferred it. However, DH felt that the soup lacked seasoning , and doused his portion with some salt and lots of pepper 😀
Further, we ordered the Onion and Goat Cheese Phyllo Pastry Parcels, which was caramelised onion and feta cheese enclosed in crisp phyllo pastry. The sweetness of the caramelised onion worked beautifully against the slight saltiness of the cheese, and was great with the freshness of the pesto – sort of like a French take on our classic onion samosa 😀 Again, loved it ! I gobbled up the food before taking pictures (facepalm), so here’s a pic of the dish from Zomato 😀
For main course, DH was super excited because they had a parmesan cheese wheel imported from Italy, and were serving pasta made fresh and hot on the cheese wheel ! 😀 Of course we ordered that! The highlight was that they invited us to watch when the pasta was being tossed about in the cheese wheel. See how the pasta is being torched, causing the cheese to melt and form a gooey sauce? Love!
DH chose to have his pasta with a side of grilled vegetables, so this is what the finished dish looked like:
This dish was so rich that DH couldn’t finish it; we ended up packing and taking it home.
I, on the other hand, chose to order a cottage cheese steak. It was served with a side of fettuccine pasta, salad, and some grilled vegetables. Overall a good dish, except for the fact that my cottage cheese was slightly under seasoned. (Again, gobbled up the food before taking pictures, so here’s a pic of the dish from Zomato :D)
Unfortunately, we were so filled up by the end of this that we decided to skip dessert. Cheese tends to do that, you know! 😀
Pricing
Surprisingly, the pricing is quite affordable when you take into account the restaurant’s location and cuisine. The priciest dish that we had was the parmesan wheel pasta, at 499. Rest were in the sub-300 range, which is great. Portion sizes are also apt to share between two people (both starters and main course). All in all, you can expect the meal to cost between 1.3 to 2k for two people, based on what you order. Like I said, we didn’t order dessert, so our bill hovered around the 1.3k mark.
Overall
I thought this was a good dinner. I think classic European cuisine is not spicy in general, so Indians might find that it lacks a bit of seasoning for their palate. Most importantly, you tend to note the lack of spice in the dishes. That however does not in any way insinuate that there is a lack of flavour. There are bags of it, in fact!
Good to visit at least once, IMHO 🙂 Why don’t you try it and let us know? If you’ve already been here, how did you like it?
a burst of flavor 