When you first step into Bonnie Ruth’s, you don’t think of it as an exquisite restaurant with a master chef. (Unless you’ve never been to a five-star restaurant.) First of all, the dress is casual; you can wear basketball clothes if you want to. Secondly, the door which looks like the main door is blocked and there are three doors out/in of the venue. Third, the restaurant doesn’t look extremely fancy and decorated inside like a five-star; it’s modest but great for a 4 (or perhaps 3) restaurant. The impression of it being your average semi-fancy restaurant, like Cheesecake Factory or Grand Lux Cafe, is w-r-o-n-g-wrong. Bonnie Ruth’s is an amazing restaurant that could be named the best French restaurant in Frisco or perhaps Plano, too, once I’ve tried them all.
When stepping into Bonnie Ruth’s Café Trottoir et Patisserie, you are immediately immersed from light from the dim chandeliers, the stained mirrors, and the general brown-tan-black-white antiqueish French restaurant feel. The tables are a solid granite (or marble, sorry bad eyes) with wooden chairs and brown leather booths. Each table has its own little spotlight to be able to see your food, a necessity in this dim restaurant. Additionally, there is a bar near the center of the restaurant.
After much delicious bread, we were served the Eggs Benedict, a favorite of mine. The English muffin was soft, but with a crunchy bottom. It went well with the salty, tender ham and jello-like egg white with creamy, non-gaggy yolk.
Next was to try part of my brother’s Kids’ Bonnie Burger. The burger had the cheddar cheese melted over the warm, tender, juicy burger. The burger was just the right amount of salty and delicious. The bun was a warm sesame seed bun. No words can describe it but this: best burger in Frisco. (Sorry Frisco Bar :p)
Next up was the also delicious but slightly average (still good) Chicken Paillard, which is basically thin chicken. The chicken was topped with a lemon caper sauce and served with tender green beans. The Chicken Paillard was good, but not worth wasting your choice on.
This is what to try: the Steak au Poivre. Although a little expensive, ($36 for dinner, we split it in two since it’s pretty large anyway) it is to die for. The dish is basically a peppercorn crusted filet with cognac demi-glace. The good part: it’s served with potato celeriac puree and haricots verts in shallot butter. The steak itself is delicious — the salty peppercorn crust counters the sweet cognac demi-glace in a way in which it’s good. The steak is very tender and easy to bite into, not dry and tough like a beef wellington. The peppercorn crust tasted a lot like a char, except perhaps better. The way the sauce soaks into the beef and when you bite the steak squeezes into your mouth provides a very pleasant sensation for all areas of the mouth. Even with the deliciousness of the steak, it may not seem extremely satisfying until you have the potato celeriac puree with it. The puree covers the back of the mouth to finish your tongue and set the keystone in. I am not exactly sure what it was, but it tasted somewhat like a gratin and somewhat cheesy. They may have only added celiac to the potato puree but I’m pretty sure I tasted other things in it. All I know is that they were the best version of mashed potatoes I had ever eaten in my life. If you’ve ever eaten au gratin potatoes, this is the same taste but in a different form.
For dessert, since we were full, we ordered small cookies. They were sweet, not crispy, not chewy, but not a winner. I would have rather had the potatoes for dessert again. (Haha.)
Unfortunately, the whole time, the service was deathly slow with about 7 other parties in the restaurant. The waiters are very outgoing and friendly, though.
Overall, Bonnie Ruth’s is a hidden gem. Because it isn’t a fancy restaurant and it doesn’t have its own building or other things like that, one may assume it to be a normal restaurant. If the chef of this restaurant replaced a currently fancy restaurant’s dishes with all of these, it may not be the fanciest restaurant, but it’d still be up to par with other restaurants. All in all, Bonnie Ruth’s is the premiere Frisco restaurant for semi-fine dining and has one of the best tastes of other restaurants in it’s class. In other words, it’s ahead of the game and ahead of the competition.
