The house-made pâté du chef at Georges Bistro comes in a small glass canning jar. Its petite appearance belies what sits within: A very generous four-inch slab sliced into six tranches of smooth, rich, mildly flavored yet oh-so-good pâté -- plenty enough for two to share over a glass of wine and conversation and an excellent way to start a meal at this Gallic little gem on Lower Westheimer.
Georges Bistro is the latest incarnation of the rustic, renovated house that once housed Chez Georges, and later, the critically acclaimed Feast. It is also the newest of the restaurant concepts in Houston created by Georges Guy and his wife, Monique (they also opened Chez Georges, Bistro Provence, La Brocante, Bistro Don Camillo and, most recently, Bistro Des Arts), since they first arrived in the States more than 30 years ago.
Chez Georges was a fine-dining restaurant with white tablecloths. Georges Bistro has less lofty aspirations, aiming to be a mid-priced neighborhood place serving traditional French fare. As it happened, Monique Guy was our server during one of our visits on a slow day at the restaurant and volunteered without being asked, "Our customers wanted a bistro. They wanted this kind of menu -- these types of dishes -- instead of fine dining."
A picturesque order of escargots à la bourguignonne arrived, served on a white porcelain escargot plate with an emulsion of butter, parsley and garlic pooling over each snail and a single twig of marjoram laid across the plate. It smelled as divine as it looked, artfully arranged atop a white paper doily and a beautiful charger plate with a pale green and yellow lattice-patterned rim. The butter sauce could have been better seasoned, but that was a minor quibble. It came with authentic French bread -- crusty on the outside, moist and slightly elastic on the inside -- so that dipping the bread into the garlic butter sauce was a pure joy.
In fact, that Thursday afternoon, just about everything was praiseworthy. Though the boeuf en daube (a Provençal beef stew) displayed a somewhat stronger gaminess than one would expect from beef, the hunks of meat were moist and tender, with enough fat and cartilaginous fibers in them to trap the flavor of the intensely flavored wine-based braising gravy. Served in a lovely green stoneware bowl and garnished with masterfully cooked disks of golden-crisp potato fused together like the top crust of a scalloped potato casserole, the dish was a fine example of traditional French cooking.
Even better was a daily special of duck confit salad, perfection in the form of a quarter leg of duck served with fresh mixed greens, vibrant red wedges of farm-fresh tomatoes, a larger portion of those killer pan-crisp potatoes and a poached egg. Dusted in an aromatic herbed salt mixture, the skin more soft than crisp, the savory preserved duck meat -- eaten with a dollop of creamy egg yolk or with satiny-crisp potato -- was simply exemplary, precisely what one would want to find in a small French bistro.
There's a certain timelessness to George's Bistro that is utterly charming. This is not one of those modern restaurants where cool young chefs sport tattoos and ponytails, wearing fashionably colored aprons and looking like the new wave of kitchen rockstars. Georges is like discovering that quaint little bed-and-breakfast in the heart of the French countryside where one is welcomed at the door by a modestly dressed French-speaking granddaughter who acts as both the hostess and the waitress, her grandmother overseeing the front of the house while her grandfather cooks and sends food out from the kitchen.
Georges Guy doesn't come into the dining room much, but glimpses of him can be caught through the open kitchen doorway. He wears pristine chef's whites in the old tradition, with the long white apron in front, his gray hair slightly wavy and hanging loosely in a '70s-esque fashion. He can't seem to hang up that apron. He has "retired" no fewer than three times in recent years, each time coming back to the kitchen.
In the kitchen, shiny copper pots hang above an old-fashioned hearth with a framed black-and-white wedding portrait of the owners. Sunny yellow walls accented by dark brown crown molding are complemented by hanging chandeliers and yellow Provençal table runners in the anterior restaurant space. Antique-style chairs upholstered in a dark maroon pattern are matched with maroon tablecloths and napkins elsewhere in the restaurant.