excellent food and wine. to celebrate bastille day, a meal and a french restaurant is called for. after reading the reviews of claire's kitchen, we had high hopes of an excellent night and were not disappointed.
we started with a glass of champagne, which was very nice and then moved on to entrée. i had french onion soup and my dinning partner rabbit terrine and both were excellent. the soup was wonderful with the sweetness of the onions perfectly offsetting the seasoning and it was not scalding hot either, so a good spoonful could be had to enjoy the flavour. the duck terrine was equally as good
for mains we ordered the duck and pinot noir pie and the beef. the pie was wonderful with a perfect pastry crust and a rich duck filling. the beef was brilliant, up there with the best i have tasted. cooked perfectly medium rare, beautifully tender and succulent and a wonderful flavour. it was the highlight of the meal.
although not needing dessert, when presented with the selection by the waiter it is hard to resist, so a lemon tart and chocolate éclair were ordered. the tart was nice and lemony and not too sweet which is just the way i like it. my partner was equally impressed with the éclair, with the a nice light pastry and a rich chocolate filling.
the wine list is all french and reasonably priced. our order of a cab sav/merlot blend went well with our meals. french reds are much more restrained than aussie ones and i think match the rich flavours of the food better.
service was attentive yet unobtrusive, but my partner's dessert did not arrive, so we needed to order it again. a small negative, but the waiters were most apologetic. the french accented waiters were quite hard to understand at times. in fact when explaining the special cocktails for the evening, we had no idea what the second of the two were as it sounded more french the english. we were amused more than anything by this though.
lastly, if you do not like cigarette smoke, request a table away from the front door. our table was right at the front and with many smokers outside, whenever a person come or went a waft of smoke came in which made things a little unpleasant.