DEAL! $30 GETS YOU $60 @ BISTROT LA MINETTE

http://www.mydailythread.com/Philadelphia
Only $30 gets you a $60 value at Bistrot La Minette. You're looking at a 50% savings on a fine, French night out.

Bistrot La Minette
A friendly French Bistrot is not an oxymoron in Queen Village
By: Piers Marchant

While you can say the act of opening a restaurant is always a collaborative effort, the opening of this elegant Bistrot in the middle of the so-called French Corridor of Bella Vista/Queen Village was truly a family affair. Chef/owner (and Philly native) Peter Woolsey enlisted the aid of his French wife, a skilled photographer, who helped create the décor and artwork that adorns the wall; his in-laws, who gave him numerous suggestions for the menu and feel; and building whatever he could by hand, with the help of his father, going so far as to build the dining table in the private guest room using some of the old joists from the original construction of the building.

His training as a pastry chef at Paris' Le Cordon Bleu, and his subsequent stay in France at Lucas Carton, a Michelin three-star restaurant, greatly informed his idea of the kind of restaurant he wanted to open when he came back to Philly. Finally given the opportunity for his own place after working for restaurateurs Georges Perrier and Stephen Starr, he opened the doors in 2008, to his continued amazement. "It's fifty percent perseverance," he wryly observes, "and fifty percent luck."

The menu was already "designed in [his] head," before he got started, but he knew he had to fine tune it.

A self-designated "real stickler for authenticity," Woolsey wanted his customers to really feel as if they were entering not just a French restaurant, but France itself. To that end, he also enlisted the aid of a French colleague of his, who flew over and worked with him on menu craft and design for several months.

The décor, all wood and aged metal, blends perfectly with the bright, open space, creating an airy environment from which to order from the sumptuous menu. True to his word, the food is largely traditional Bistrot fare, without being clichéd (you won't find French onion soup here, for example). The menu, including salmon tartare with a blood orange vinaigrette, escargot in herbed butter, seared duck breast with white asparagus in a black currant sauce and mustard-braised rabbit with house-made tagliatelle, is French without being stuffy and pompous. Virtually everything is made from scratch, just the way the French chefs Woolsey trained under would have it.