Bistro Du Vin is a French restaurant under the Les Amis group. We had the set lunch menu at Bistro Du Vin and I'll recommend it as a place that is value for money. It's one of those places where you pay reasonable prices for pretty good food. The set lunch goes at $34++ per pax. Not exactly the cheapest dining in town but for the cosy ambience, 3 course meal with premium ingredients, it's considered cheap in its own way.
We kicked off the meal with complimentary warm bread and butter, very typical in European restaurants. For starters, we chose foie gras ravioli with roasted hazelnut and portwine sauce and mushroom velouté with creme fraiche and truffle scented oil. Both dishes were executed excellently. There was feedback from my dining companion, fussypot, that the portwine sauce was a little oily but it was otherwise a very satisfactory dish. The mushroom velouté explained to me in layman terms by the staff as very thick mushroom soup, was rich in its mushroom taste with the truffle oil not lost amidst its richness.
For mains, fussypot had braised beef "bourguignon" with carrot, bacon, pearl onions and mashed potatoes while I had overbaked spring chicken with sautéed mushroom and bacon. The beef was cooked till tender and fussypot could even discard her knife and simply dined with her fork. She did complained that she was disappointed by the hard pearl onions which was supposed to be cooked together with the beef till soft and infused with the taste of the dish. I like everything about my spring chicken dish. Chicken was tender, mushrooms were adequately sautéed and bacon (note the singular) was crispy. It's definitely a satisfying dish. Having said that, the spring chicken whilst good only succeeded in making me remember the restaurant but not the particular dish.
Desserts were baked apple tart on puff pastry with coffee and cardamom ice cream (changed to honeycomb ice cream) and chocolate & caramel tart with raspberry sorbet. I've eaten multiple renditions of Apple tarts and I like this one the least. The puff pastry was not hot, the apples were crunchy but difficult to cut and I felt the dish was generally difficult to eat because everything besides the ice cream was hard. The issue of hard did not end here. The chocolate & caramel tart was frozen too hard to eat enjoyably. I believed the caramel was meant to flow out when cut open but it was solidified with the chocolate. Both plates we were served with were chilling cold which gave us the impression that the food was prepared in advance and left in the fridge. I always felt that hot tarts with cold ice cream was a match made in heaven. I fail to appreciate cold tarts with cold ice cream...
On the whole, I found the visit to Bistro Du Vin satisfactory and I'm willing to give them another go. For the price I paid, I felt it was good value as the portions were not miserly at all. They even provided coffee and tea to end off the meal. While I didn't feel any dish particularly stood out, I felt the restaurant as a whole stood out if I compared this establishment to many other value for money French dining. You may want to consider Bistro Du Vin if you wish to celebrate a special occasion at a presentable place and keep your budget under $100.
Bistro Du Vin
1 Scotts Road, #01-14 Shaw Centre
Lunch is from 12pm - 3pm (last order at 2pm)