Cavaillon Restaurant

Cavaillon Restaurant
14701 Via Bettona, Ste 200
San Diego, CA 92127
(858) 433-0483

www.cavaillonrestaurant.com/

A few weeks ago, groupon had a deal for Cavaillon Restaurant. I hadn’t ever heard of it before, but upon looking it up, I saw some good reviews and an interesting menu. I was really excited to check it out, especially because I love French food and haven’t been to a French place in a long time.  Boyfriend and I have been pretty busy, so this weekend was our first opportunity to visit.

The restaurant is located in a cozy residential neighborhood. Our tables were decorated with large gold plates, which were removed after we were seated.  In addition to the regular menu, they had two tasting menus available. You can view their regular menu on their website.

After we placed our order, we were presented with a basket of piping hot French rolls.

The bread had a very hard and crispy exterior.  It tasted delicious.

We ordered an appetizer that wasn’t on the regular menu, the foie gras au torchon, their “award” winning dish with foie gras and brioche, and so we decided to try it.

Unfortunately, neither Boyfriend or I particular liked this dish. We thought everything was just too sweet. And the brioche tasted too much like regular toast to me.

We also ordered truffle fries.

The fries tasted delicious.  Hot, thin, crispy and with the taste of truffle oil.

I ordered the Maple Leaf Duck Duo, Polenta, Green Lentils, Organic Mix Greens as my main course.

The duck was served two ways. Bit sized cutes were seared a medium rare.  This was really good. The sauce, the flavor, the texture. It was cooked perfectly too.  One bite and I wished I wanted to go to France.  A portion of duck breast was served broiled with a crispy skin.  I loved the crispy skin, but though this portion of the duck was really salty.

Boyfriend ordered the Pan Roasted Beef Tenderloin, Red Wine Demi-glace, Crispy Potatoes Fondant.

The beef tenderloin was served like a steak.  We were both expecting more of a tender roast.  Boyfriend liked his crispy potatoes and thought the steak was okay, but he didn’t love it.

For dessert, we ordered Warm & Crispy Dark Chocolate Pastilla, with coconut ice cream and passionfruit caramel sauce.  This is supposed to be their most famous dessert.

A filo pastry is served warm with melted chocolate.  It was quite tasty and rich, much like a chocolate souffle.  The coconut ice cream was delicious and I really loved the passionfruit caramel sauce which was the perfect blend of sour and sweet.

At the end of our meal we were presented with two little macarons which were lemon and thyme flavored. Delicious!

The service was a little bit erratic, but attentive.  There didn’t seem to be any real system of service.  We were approached and served by multiple people, who didn’t have any knowledge of what the previous server had or hadn’t done.

I left pretty happy with the meal. Boyfriend wasn’t as satisfied.  He said he didn’t really like French food after the meal. One annoying thing is that they put an automatic service charge because we were using groupon, which they didn’t tell us until giving us our bill. So far none of the groupons I’ve used have done this.  All the rules and restrictions are written on the groupon coupon and it did not say it would charge an automatic gratuity. We would have probably paid around that much tip anyway, but I don’t like that we were automatically charged 18%.

One other annoying thing was the diners we were seated next to.  I’m not sure why people think that others can’t hear what they are saying, when they are seated only a few feet away.  I couldn’t help overhearing some of their conversation. Lately I’ve been using my large camera at dimly lit restaurants. It’s a lot harder to hide, but my pictures come out so much better. I try to be discreet, but obviously it’s hard with such a large camera. The table next to us noticed and one person must have asked the other why I was taking pictures.  Then I overhead her companion answer along the lines of “she must be one of those food bloggers. They take pictures of their food and stuff. They think they are writers or something.”  Ouch.