French food has long been hard to come by in Detroit or southeast Michigan. The reputable Standard Bistro and Larder in Ann Arbor blessed us for a few brief years before closing in 2020, and there was little else to speak of until Bar Pigalle opened in Detroit’s Brush Park last year.
And yet Detroit still calls itself the “Paris of the Midwest.”
Into that hole stepped Le Suprême, modeled off of French brasseries, which offer traditional fare in a relaxed but slightly upscale setting. The menu is full of plates like foie gras torchon and steak frites, and the vibe is chill, even at the higher price point.
The restaurant opened in August on the ground floor of the freshly renovated Book Tower, a Dan Gilbert project. Many of those dining and milling about the bar on our visit looked like the type of young folks who may work in Gilbert’s downtown fiefdom. His team also noticed the lack of French cuisine, and the partnership with Method Co. took off, said Scott Sadoff, director of operations for Method.
The restaurant’s interior is impressive — oxblood leather banquettes, and lovely tilework on the walls. A co-diner and I tried to discern whether the intricate, mosaic tiled flooring was the building’s original. It was not, a server told us, though it was given a distressed look and laid with some imperfections to make it appear as if it had been there for 100 years. Overall, guests could feel comfortable eating here in jeans or a tuxedo, Sadoff said.
Chef Brinn Sinnott, a veteran of French restaurants like Le Diplomate in Washington, D.C., developed a menu around classic recipes, and said he focuses on the technique that is essential to proper French cuisine. We started with the French onion soup, an admittedly basic order, and it did the job. A better starter is the country pate, pate de campagne, a soft mix of chicken liver, foie gras, and pork, with shallots, parsley, pistachio, thyme, and other spices. The small cube arrives with vibrant, house pickled cornichons and a salad of pickled vegetables that imparts strong blasts of fennel. The pate did not particularly stand on its own — we found it just a tad bland — but the accountraments did the heavy lifting and we enjoyed it.
Le Suprême’s escargot was garlicky, and I mean garlicky, with little pods of button mushrooms poached in white wine that are then submerged with the snails in melted garlic butter that holds hints of nutmeg and brandy. The pool is rendered electric green from a parsley puree, and adorned with breadcrumbs to provide a pleasant textural contrast.
Perhaps the best plate was the mushroom tart, its pastry deeply laminated with shatter crisp layers. It holds a mix of beech, wild trumpet and maitake mushrooms that were gently cooked with shallots and thyme, and put on top of a leek fondue made with an alpine cheese that Sinnott described as not unlike parmesan. That’s further enhanced with a truffle puree — excellent.
Le Suprême’s mussels, moules mariniere, is a recipe from the north coast of France that includes white wine, shallots, thyme, and bay leaves, and the mix is finished with butter. It didn’t quite pop but we weren’t sure what was missing — we speculated that it could’ve used more wine.
The bourguignon was a bit of a head-scratcher. The flavor was mostly there, but the meat was not as tender as one would expect it should be. Though the service throughout our meal was fairly solid, our server informed us about an hour after we had ordered that the kitchen had already made the last of its bourguignon.
A moment later the server returned with a plate of bourguignon and apologized for the mix up. But the sauce had congealed a bit, it was not hot, and the plate seemed like it had been sitting out for a minute. Maybe under different circumstances the dish would have made the cut and I would not recommend against ordering it, but something went wrong on the delivery this time.
Le Suprême serves its meals with awesome bread baked in house and butter coated with Maldon salt, and on weekends it now offers brunch. Each of our cocktails were excellent, especially the mon cheri with vodka, rose, lemon juice, rhubarb, absinthe, sparkling rosé, and the wine list is deep. Our order was hefty — more than two people would normally eat — but the $300 bill would have been more worth it had the few rough edges been addressed. But, regardless, Le Suprême is worth a visit for a French fix.
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