Bar Purlieu — Restaurant in Eugene

This review is for the Valentines day 2019 5 course dinner with wine pairing. If my memory is off on the food descriptions forgive me, I forgot to take a picture of the menu. The dinner started out with a foie gras stuffed pastry and cognac soaked elderberries. Next was a salad before moving on to a white chocolate risotto topped with flower petals. After that was duck breast with whipped potatoes and a dark chocolate sauce. After the duck was a filet mignon with a small pastry and I believe demi glace. The meal finished with a lavendar vanilla pot de creme.

Having that menu in a little eugene restaurant I was honestly quite skeptical, especially with their odd website layout and website color scheme. As the dinner coursed on however, the food just became increasingly delicious. The white chocolate risotto in particular sounded like an impossible flavor combination which proved to be so well balanced and absolutely delicious I had to fight the urge to go get another bowl of it. The duck was the best I've ever had, with a sweet, salty, and savory profile I've never experienced. The filet mignon was melt in your mouth tender and so incredibly well complimented by the crunch of the pastry. The pot de creme was a creamy and delicious, but not strong in flavor. I suspect it was toned down due to the sweet intensity of the dessert wine it was paired with.

One thing that struck me was the portion sizes. I expected them to be smaller as the meal was several courses, but when the food first started coming out I was nervous they were trying too hard to be pretentious. I foresaw a taco bell run on the way home. As it turns out the portions all came together into the perfect meal. My wife and I left satisfyingly full without being stuffed.

Another thing that stood out was the flavor profiles. Each item had some sweetness or chocolate to it which I suspect was due to valentines day. Each item however was just so well balanced and surprisingly delicious. I thought their wine pairings were well thought out but looking at the meal as a whole it is clear that each step along the way was well thought out and planned ahead.

As far as the service goes, I was very surprised. They had reservation times every hour. I expected to be herded in like cattle and rushed out for the second wave. My reservation was for the first time slot of the night and when we came in there were several tables marked reserved. We were told to sit anywhere but the reserved tables. Seems wierd since we have a reservation I thought. Turns out they spread us across the restaurant so each service section was evenly distributed for better service. They also didnt jam pack the restaurant. The reserved tables were for the second group on the next hour. I never once felt rushed or hurried, nor did I feel like I was waiting for anything. Everything about that told me they were priding themselves on quality over quantity.

The staff was also great, they were on top of things, moved quickly, paid attention, and were very kind and polite.

Again, this review is only for one night, and one which they may have simply been trying extra hard, but at this point I think this will become one of Eugene's little gems. I expect the restaurant will flourish and grow and I hope they keep their quality service and excellent food. I know I will be going back soon. I would highly recommend you...

*Racism incident:

My boyfriend and I just ate here tonight. He is not fluent in English and very visibly a person of color. He didn’t like his steak, no big deal. He described the taste as bleachy, because he doesn’t always have the right word in English. He repeated the word like five times and our waitress just kept saying “what?” until I (white, English speaker) said he thought it tasted bleachy. Whatever, we just brushed it off. We still racked up a decent bill and had a great time together. We both thought it was strange that when he returned his steak that they didn’t recommend another dish for us (he would have paid for it), but we figured they were just busy.

Fast forward to a half hour later. They dropped the check and I went to the restroom. Our waitress apparently thought that was an appropriate time to confront him saying that “everyone in the kitchen tried the steak and it wasn’t bleachy.” He tried to explain it was undercooked and hard to cut. Once again he doesn’t speak a lot of English and that’s super clear. She then offered him to cook it more even though we were obviously through with our meal and she had already taken the food a half hour before? When I came back from the restroom he told me what happened. He was totally embarrassed and already gets anxiety eating at majority white places because stuff like this can happen.

Why the heck did she 1) offer to recook the steak after we had the check and had just finished dessert? And 2) why the HECK did you all wait until the one English speaker at the table wasn’t present? And 3) make the one visibly Latino and non English speaker feel even more awkward than he already did? Why wait until I left?

I went back to tip them and confront them about it because he was pissed and embarrassed and just wanted to leave. We gave them a 20% tip (I’ve been in the industry for over a decade and get that tips are important) and I apologize to the short haired blonde girl I snapped at (that was my bad, you were incredibly patient and great). Our waitress was a long haired brunette wearing an elephant necklace and she was who was completely inappropriately handling the situation.

Girl, if you’re gonna offer food after you drop the check and tell the one brown guy in the restaurant that the whole staff disagrees with him when it’s clear there’s a language and race barrier and make him feel embarrassed when you KNOW if he were a white dude you wouldn’t have said a darn thing (people don’t like their food all the time, just refund it and move on), do better. Don’t humiliate him while his white girlfriend is in the restroom.

That’s the most passive aggressive racism we’ve seen in a while. Absolutely not. I know y’all know...

We had high hopes for this visit, however, unfortunately it was unpleasant from start to finish.

Upon arrival, it seemed they had to scramble to find and prep a table despite our reservation, as we were visiting from out of town for our anniversary. Which was totally understandable and no problem at all, except they sat us directly behind the prepping station for the plates and silverware, and it was incredibly loud and very uncomfortable as we could hardly communicate with each other over the noise. Servers were standing directly behind my head handling that station on and off the entire time, but after the initial sit down not going well we didn’t want to seem like a burden by asking to move.

That wouldn’t have been so bad if the service wasn’t so rude each visit to the table. The restaurant was busy, but we were aware that our table was being seen far less frequently than those around us. We tried to get the attention of the staff in the kindest manner possible to no avail.

Our server questioned our entire order, made comments that it was a lot of food for two people, and when the check arrived we noticed she added the large portion of an item we asked for the appetizer size of, but we still paid for it to avoid yet another hassle.

We ordered several dishes and some of it was great. We were most excited about the steak tartare which may have been seasonal, but it was definitely the best item we were served. We enjoyed the charcuterie board, and the mushroom tart was unique but flavourful.

What sealed the deal on the experience was the octopus soup(?) and the steak and fries. I’ve never seen octopus served in a soup/stew style like that, which was quite disappointing for an octopus dish, but even more so it was one of the most chaotic dishes I’ve ever been served at any restaurant. It didn’t make much culinary sense and wasn’t enjoyable at all unfortunately.

That being said, the steak came out literally cold to touch. We ordered medium rare, and it arrived inedible. It took over 15 minutes for the server to look in our direction. When she finally stopped by, she offered to cook the steak on the plate longer, but that was it. There was no acknowledgement of how undercooked it was, instead she seemed annoyed. At that point we were so ready to leave we just kindly asked for the steak to be removed from the tab as it was still untouched. The bill was quite expensive even without the steak, which we expected, but the experience being so stressful was unexpected and made the price point not worth it.

We didn’t try any desserts due to how uncomfortable and unpleasant our visit was. I’m hoping this experience was a one-off for this establishment as it seemed to have a...