Le Grand Bistro

Le Grand Bistro website
1512 Curtis Street
Denver, CO 80202
303.534.1155

I’ve been to Le Grand Bistro before and I want to keep going back.  Everything I’ve had there has been delicious and interesting.  I’ve been for dinner and brunch.  I went in January with my friend Tom for his birthday.  That was when we discovered that weekend brunch had bottomless mimosas for $9.  That made for a, how do you say… special birthday.

This trip brought me to Le Grand Bistro for another brunch with my parents.  We were seated more toward the bar area which led to another discovery: the Bloody Mary bar.  It’s $10 to make your own Bloody Mary.  Grabbing life by the olives, I decided to go for it.  The waitress served me a glass filled with ice and an impressive amount of vodka.  (You can choose your alcohol.)  I then made my way to the bar.  The first thing to mention was the absolute beauty of the setup.  All of the ingredients were very artfully arranged.  There were three different Bloody Mary mixes to choose from.  There was the Pescatarian mix which included Clamato.  There was the Herbivore which included V8.  I chose to try the Carnivore which had the following ingredients: veal stock, chicken stock, tomato juice, Tabasco, Cholula, celery salt, horseradish, lemon juice, Worcestershire sauce, Saracha, all-spice, chili flake, pepper, sea salt, onion powder and garlic.  Each mix then had ingredients to match.  The Pescatarian had shrimp and fish, the Carnivore had bacon and beef jerky, and the Herbivore had an array of vegetables.  They even had some large celery stalks to put in there.  I added to my drink: green olives, lemon and lime slices, pearl onions, cherry tomato, a piece of bacon, a piece of beef jerky, celery salt and garlic cloves.  My drink may sound disgusting but it was wonderful!  I wasn’t expecting such a large amount of alcohol in the drink so by the end of brunch I was somewhat “sleepy.”

Whew.  Now that I’ve written a novel about my drink, on to the food!  My mom and I both ordered the Crab Cake Eggs Benedict.  Instead of an English muffin, the base was a lump crab cake.  It was topped with poached eggs and hollandaise sauce.  The crab cake was actually just a patty made of all crab.  It was the best I’ve ever had in a Colorado restaurant.  It was fresh and sweet.  The egg was poached to perfection and the hollandaise sauce was appropriately creamy and buttery.  Each bite was heaven.  My dad chose the Steak Benedict.  This had the English muffin with skirt steak, poached eggs, and au poivre hollandaise sauce.  The steak looked tender.  The au poivre sauce was basically the hollandaise sauce with peppercorns in it.  The taste I had was still good.  All of our dishes came with breakfast potatoes.  Even these were impressive since they included regular red potatoes, sweet potatoes and purple potatoes.  I’d never seen purple potatoes before.

I had so much fun.  I want to go back and spend all day at brunch.  Afterward, we made our way down the 16th Street mall in Denver to an exhibit of Da Vinci’s inventions.