Note: 12/2010 – This restaurant has now closed.
I know the Food Dude rightly requires a few visits to each restaurant we critique, but in this case I thought it was fair to waive this requirement. The prior review, from 3.19.05, is still the gold standard. The other reason is that no one should have to sit through a restaurant experience as bad as mine at Bleu more than once. And yet, in pursuit of due diligence, I did return a second time. There will not be a third.
The Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts in Portland is a good idea, and of course we want to applaud all good ideas grounded in the mission to teach as many people as possible the values of good food. So it pains me to have to say to all those hard working students: the Institute is failing you. A good cooking school would not allow its students to serve anyone, let alone paying customers, meals such as I was served. At one point as I was contemplating the effect on my stomach of biting into the barely cooked, gummy and stuck-together pappardelle, I asked myself, “Would the staff eat this?”
But the cooking is only part of the experience of course. On my first visit, wait staff twice dropped plates while we were having lunch, our waiter’s apparel was stained and we were kept waiting a full half hour for our entrées. (On the second visit, service ran smoothly and without incident.)
The décor is pleasantly uncluttered and contemporary, the white leather and mahogany chairs comfortable, and the two rooms spacious enough for diners to have a conversation without stress on the vocal cords.
Bleu offers a menu that is changed once every three months. during lunch, diners can choose either three courses at $10.95 or five at $14.95. Dinners are five-course dinners are $24.95. The dishes are based on mostly seasonal, local ingredients.
The Fall menu is as follows:
Soups
• Puree of Butternut Squash
•Tomato Basil. My Tomato Basil had chunks of canned tomato in a thin tomato cream soup. Not inedible, but about as tasty as a doctored store-bought version. And why canned tomatoes when good fresh tomatoes are still available?
Appetizers
•Spice-rubbed roasted Quail with orange glazed carrots, chermoula, black beluga lentils and quail essence. Did not sample.
•Manila clams and Totten Blue mussels steamed in fish fumet, white wine, saffron and chorizo with Parmigiano-Reggiano crusted baguette and saffron oil. Two mussels and one clam in a bland broth with a burnt baguette.
•Chive crepe with wild mushroom ragout, roasted shallots and herbed goat cheese puree. The crepe was pale and rubbery, the mushrooms (they seemed reconstituted from dried specimens) lacked any liquid or ragout as advertised, and the herbed goat cheese puree, which at first look I thought was mayonnaise, was spread under the crepe in a quantity so abundant to be off-balance.
Salads
•Radicchio and curly endive with marinated fall radishes and English cucumbers in a dill-buttermilk dressing with thyme oil. Did not sample.
•Frisee, red potatoes, fried croûtons and hard cooked egg in a sherry and smoked bacon vinaigrette. Did not sample.
•Applewood smoked rainbow trout with arugula, parmigiano-reggiano cheese and shaved fennel in a lemon-shallot vinaigrette. I wish it had been just smoked trout; it was actually a puree with a mayonnaise-like creamy consistency that overwhelmed any subtlety the fish may have had.
•Field greens and herb, a blend of local, organic lettuces and herbs with heirloom tomatoes, yellow and red bell peppers in a shallot-mustard emulsion dressing. Did not sample.
Entrees
•Halibut lightly floured and sautéed in brown butter, lemon and parsley with purple pommes macaire, braised leeks and sautéed green beans. Did not sample.
•Grilled pork tenderloin sandwich served open face on fried crouton with caramelized red onions and whole grain mustard cream. The pork tenderloin was burned black at the edges, as was the large crouton.
•Cornish game hen vol au vent, fricassee filled puff pastry with batonnet of fall vegetables and wild mushrooms. One of things Bleu seems to find most difficult is dough – pastry or otherwise. In this case the texture was more like pie dough, with a firm bite, than light, flaky with fine buttery folds as you would expect. The hen and mushroom filling in the pastry doughnut-like hole was dry.
•Vegetarian pappardelle, housemade herbed pappardelle pasta set on rainbow chard with tourney vegetables cooked etuver with tomato coulis. The pasta folds stuck together, were barely cooked and completely inedible. The chard was next-to-raw, as was one of the two carrots.
Desserts
•Vanilla Crème Brulee, a standard performance but fine.
•Cream puff, a pate a choux shell filled with vanilla pastry cream dusted with powdered sugar on chocolate sauce drizzle. It arrived collapsed, not puffy at all, with a bland filling and even blander chocolate topping.
•Pear galette, a pate brisee folded freehand, filled with poached pears set on caramel sauce and finished with honey-mascarpone cheese. The pastry was like a rich, heavy butter cookie. On my second bite I tasted salt. There’s that problem with getting the dough right again. Often there is a layer of frangipane or buttery cream beneath the cooked fruit to provide a rich counterpoint to the play of sweet and tart in the fruit. There wasn’t any in this one.
•Chocolate soufflé, with warm vanilla crème anglaise, came out sunken with the texture of cake and a weak chocolate flavor.
There are values inherent in a solid Cordon Bleu course, such as respect for ingredients, a striving for a balance and a mastery of technique, that sadly are not in evidence at Bleu. Despite being a training ground for students, Bleu should still expect to be judged as a professional restaurant since that is what it purports to be. At this level of performance it should close down and not re-open until it can consistently deliver even just moderately good food. A choux pastry is a simple thing, but to do it justice requires lots of practice and attention. It also helps when the student has direct experience eating a few sublime examples of the dishes. It does nothing for the education of the students to allow them to think what they are serving is the real thing.
Bleu’s purpose might be better served as a restaurant that strives to perform at a high level with just a few simple but comforting basics. I’d be happy to find a downtown restaurant where I could reliably find a really good roast chicken, a sole meuniere that is cooked just right, a dish of tender, elemental pommes vapeur or crispy frites, a garlicky soupe de poisson Nicoise and a tarte tatin served in those broad, think pizza-like slices as you find everywhere in France (but they’d have to work on that pastry problem). Any cooking student who can satisfyingly deliver those has achieved something of which to be proud.
Phone: 503-294-9770
Address: 921 SW Morrison Street, Portland Or. 97205 Google Map
Hours: Tuesday through Friday, 6:00am-5pm Website.
Those interested can read Food Dude’s original review here.
Chambolle says
I feel really bad for all those kids who are paying a ridiculously high price for their training. It would serve them much better to get their asses kicked for a couple years in a good kitchen that really teaches them something, because in a real restaurant there isn’t this kind of room for error. Sink or swim. And who told them to all wear their uniforms on the MAX rail. Who?
foodrebel says
I really agree that they should be trained on very simple, classic dishes, be french, italian or any other cuisine. Classic dishes are there just for that: teach the basic techniques that will allow students to get foundations. Few students have told me horror stories of their Blue training: 4 per station, fighting over dishes, no leadership, ingredients that would look better in the trash, etc…
I was once invited to a 4 course lunch there where I was served rubbery lamb shanks! They can’t even teach how to write a menu! When is the last time you saw “tourne vegetables cooked etuvee”?
LOL
Pretty sad, pretty sad…
Betsy says
We had dinner there a few months ago – oh, the horror.
Reminded me of my mom’s attempts at Fancy Cooking – which only serves to waste ingredients pricier than the blocks of colby cheese, huge stalks of formerly-frozen-but-now-grey-and-disintegrated broccoli and vats of salt she used to excess during my childhood. Now? She’s big on the whole Bam! bit…
Warning to all: don’t let retired moms who already Can’t Cook grow up to obsess over Emeril on the Food Network with their now-copious spare time. And she wonders why we always insist on pizza instead of home-cooked meals when we venture home…???
Food Dude says
Of course students at the CIA in New York must work in the restaurants there, but that is an entirely different level of education. If you haven’t read it, Michael Ruhlman’s book The Making of a Chef: Mastering Heat at the Culinary Institute is a terrific read. You can get it for around ten dollars if you look around.
Emily James says
I remember a few years ago, all students were forced to work in the WCI restaurants as part of their “curriculum.” People were bitter because a lot of time was spent waiting tables in the fancy restaurants rather than learning about food preparation and technique. I have no idea if this is still true, but if it is, it would explain a few things.
Hunter says
I’d also highly recommend Ruhlman’s 2 follow ups. One is entitled “The Soul of a Chef” and the most recent, “The Reach of a Chef”. All good reads for different reasons, for example they follow a few of the same chefs through all 3. Ruhlman’s “Charcuterie” (cookbook re: smoking, salting and curing) is also highly recommended.
well seasoned says
I’ve worked alongside four WCI externs during the past decade; two were good and two were appalling. The good ones were interested in food, eager to learn, and had cooked at home when they were kids; although they had to un-learn everything they’d paid to learn at WCI, they were able to improve rapidly. The appalling ones had succumbed to WCI’s hard sell techniques and thought that their expensive degree would guarantee a great career; they had never had any interest in food or cooking before entering WCI, were totally unskilled, careless, sullen, and defensive. What that says to me is that cooks, like artists, have to bring their own passion to professional school: culinary schools can’t create cooks any more than art schools can create artists.
BTW, when anyone asks me if they should go to culinary school, I always tell them pretty much what Chambolle said: save your money, try every way you can to get an entry-level position in a good kitchen (in the dish pit, if necessary), work your ass off, be cheerful and accommodating, show that you’re interested in learning more, and if you’re lucky, the chef will notice you and will move you up. Not only is this way cheaper and more effective, it teaches you the most important thing: do you really like working in a restaurant kitchen?? A lot of sadder but wiser culinary school grads find out too late that they don’t.
Food Dude says
Cooking is a career that sounds great on paper. Schools like WCI will make it sound like a glorious profession, where employers will be on their knees begging you to become their sous chef the moment you graduate. Unfortunately, it is a hard life, that will kick the ass of most people. It takes a certain type of person to handle the kitchen, and I bet the bulk of ‘cooking school’ graduates have left the profession in 5 years, though they’ll carry the debt for some time to come. As several have said, the way to get respect is to start at the bottom. Show up on time every day, wash the dishes, take out the garbage, peel the favas, and don’t complain. Doing that for a six months or a year will get you noticed, and you’ll get respect as you move up. Oh, and realize that unless you are extremely lucky, you’ll never make a whole lot of money; just a living.
mfk fisher says
WCI is not a cooking school — it is a machine for extracting student loans from the federal government and entrapping kids in a pile of debt. One student told me that by the time he graduated (recently) his interest rate was 18%. The restaurant is a horror show. All the idiots and hypocrites associated with that place should be ashamed.
becky says
Years ago, my husband and I used to go for breakfast at the WCI restaurant. There were some bad eggs, but it was only $2 so we couldn’t complain too much.
I now have Eiffel65’s song blue in my head.
david says
I graduated from WCI in 2001 with the first Le Cordon Bleu class. The price tag for my education at the time was $20,000 (which I will still be paying for 5 more years). Now I believe it is about $45,000. At best, if you pay attention, you leave with a basic understanding of the culinary world. The sad fact is that most do not. The only requirment for your acceptence is financing and for your diploma is attendence. Many graduate with the same diploma as me just for showing up and paying. I was a cook before I enrolled and still a cook after. It took a lot of hard work and a little luck to get where I am now.
-s says
Two of the best Latin American spots in Houston are run by guys who came to the U.S. with the clothes on their backs, got dishwasher jobs, learned the trade and WHOAH loved to cook, were good at it, and moved up. If you are ever down in H-town you should check them out:
Cafe Red Onion
Hugo’s
foodrebel says
FD:
I think that the restaurant industry can be, actually, glorious…
And making money is not really a matter of luck. Quite a few people do make money because they smart, not lucky (not me!)
Unfortunatly, the smart people who make money at it are, very often, not the ones that do it with passion and skills. They just have the good sense of creating something that will sell well (Puck, Emeril come to mind…)
To get back to WCI, my advice to students always is: work in a good restaurant for free for a couple weeks to see if it’s something they REALLY want to do. Many kids – or second carrer folks – think it’s a lot different from what it really is. So if they jump in getting the loans and go through the program, they end up doing it for what they think it is, not for what it really is.
WCI should require all students to have at least some kind of restaurant work experience. They do not have those ethics. They just rack in the money. “Dough”, to them, is money, not the pastry stuff…
fuyuk says
all the big schools require previous kitchen experience before they accept you and then even the individual might wind up paying a huge sum for a piece of paper because they did not put in the personal sacrafice to get the best out of the education. This goes for the CIA, Johnson & Wales, WCI too. It is just that WCI is part of Career Education Corp. Now there is an oxymoron if there ever was one. They are very educated on how to extract money from unsuspecting folks who believe that they will offer the best path for them. Time after time I ask students why they chose WCI. The answer is,” it was the quickest program for me to go through so I could get to work”. Big mistake. Standard European apprenticeship is 3 years. Some will say that is too long and you don’t need it, it’s antiquated etc. Still works pretty good I think. So, like a lot of other people are saying, work someplace first before you decide to go to school. There are better ways to get a culinary education than going to WCI. We actually call it “wanna be a chef I think, institute”. Don’t waste the money and spend the 14 months working somewhere that will get you somewhere or at least started in the right direction.
Steven says
i, too, have eaten at restaurant Bleu, and must admit that it left me wishing that I had just dropped 5 or 6 bucks with one of the roadside vendors across the street. i have also dined at the new Oregon culinary institute on 17th & Jefferson. i recommend you try it. i got 4 courses for $9. come to think of it, everything and everybody seemed far more organized than WCI’s place. it was amazing and i will go back.
Paul says
Steven-
Thanks for the nice comments about OCI. I am a student there in the restaurant class right now. Nice to hear you thought we were well organized- it’s sometimes hard because we are a new school and presently only have 9 students (when everyone shows up) to run the restaurant. Too bad to hear about Bleu being such a bad experience for everyone.
It sounds from what many of you are saying that OCI has a much different philosophy than Western. The program is very inexpensive (about 1/3 the cost of WCI) and emphasizes the realities of the industry without glamorizing it or giving anyone visions of being a sous chef when they walk out the door.