A good French brasserie can be transportive, mimicking the sights, aromas and flavors of a meal in Paris’ 8th Arrondissement. A mediocre one can be a sad parade of brown, sodden food.
I’m happy to report that Le Zoo, new at Bal Harbour Shops from Philadelphia restaurateur Stephen Starr, is a good brasserie. A very good one.
Classics like onion soup, salad verte, steak frites, trout amandine and duck confit are executed with an eye to detail, each a textbook example of how the dish should look and taste.
Order a mushroom tart ($16), sliced in four wedges for easy sharing, and a carafe of the house red Rhone blend ($16/12 ounces) while considering the menu. Tiny pioppini mushrooms, with their dark brown caps and creamy white stems, pop when you bite their heads, releasing more of their foresty essence into flaky layers of buttery phyllo and truffled pecorino.
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