Bistro Alex

(Photo from www.citycentrehouston.com)

Bistro Alex has a reputation to live up to before you even walk through the door. As part of the Brennan’s Family Restaurants I had high hopes for this place knowing that the food should be good. The atmosphere when you walk in is a little different. Since it’s part of a hotel you walk in on the ground floor which is the bar area. No one is there to direct you where the restaurant is so we decided to go up the stairs to see if there was any sign of a restaurant there. The space is pretty large and really modern. The wait staff seemed to be on things and pretty friendly.

Below you will see me list the prices of the items we ordered, but we only spent $35 per person for the Houston Restaurant Week Menu.

(Photo from www.citycentrehouston.com)

While we looked over the Houston Restaurant Week Menu we served hot rolls topped with rosemary and salt. They hit a pet peeve of mine which is butter that looks nice and fluffy, but it’s rock hard. I loved the rolls.

For starters we ordered the Soup of the Day – Gumbo $9 and Calamari $14 (crispy calamari with charred lemons and spicy marinara). Here’s where our meal turned into the 50/50 meal. One dish from each course was fantastic and the other was ehh. The gumbo really had no flavor at all to it. When the waitress said it’s slow cooked for many hours I expected some flavor but it tasted like nothing. It needed a lot of seasoning. The calamari on the other hand was fantastic. I loved the coating which was seasoned really nicely.

I ordered the Filet $36 (Bone marrow truffled butter, caramelized onions, roasted mushrooms, garlic Yukon mashed potatoes, red wine demi). All I can say is OMG this was good. It melts in your mouth good! I loved the caramelized onions and roasted mushrooms with the sauce it was just fantastic.

D ordered the Market Fish $28 (Smoked corn, tomato concasse, green onions, okra, crab meat). This dish is one of those if you have it separate it’s good, but when you take a bite of the fish with the other toppings it taste like nothing. The corn was really sweet and the fish was seasoned ok for eating it on it’s own. Me being the foodie I am asked the waitress if we could have some extra seasoning. Next thing I know the chef comes out and the manager. While I tried not to insult him I had to explain that there just wasn’t any seasoning and it tasted like nothing. We got seasoning brought to us which tasted like Old Bay, but hey it helped a lot.

Last up was dessert. They didn’t list the prices online so I’m not sure how much the desserts go for.

We ordered the Crème Brulee (hippenmasse tuile and peach compote) and the Dark Chocolate Cake (rosas dark chocolate cake, white and dark chocolate ganache). I could have eaten a whole plate of that peach compote, the dish was really well balanced and I would order it again. The chocolate cake on the other hand while it was good it’s really rich. I think it would have been better as some cake balls or truffles. If you are going to share a dessert get this otherwise if you want to eat it all yourself go with the crème brulee.  

Overall I’m not 100% that I would go back. I expected more with it being a Brennan’s Family Restaurant because I’ve never had a bad meal at the other restaurants. If we where to pay out of pocket we would have spent $87 without counting dessert. Since we did the $35 per person restaurant week menu we only spent $70. So we saved at least $17 not counting the dessert. It’s a great way to try a restaurant out so be sure to check out the others on their list.