Brasserie is the casual restaurant in the Les Trois Rois Hotel. It is a good sized L-shaped place with one wall made up of windows overlooking the Rhine River. Another wall has murals painted on it to back up a long bench seat. Music is in the background and the nicely spaced tables are covered in a double ecru cloth and matching napkins. The room was lovely and peaceful to watch the various sizes of boats go by. At lunch they offered an a la carte menu as well as a 2-3 course menu with glasses of wine to go with the plates. We chose the lunch 3 plate menu and got glasses of their featured wine. Each course had several options to chose from. Service was friendly, helpful and the server spoke great English.
Bread service was a basket of seedy, olive and baguette breads with a soft and very yellow butter. The breads were all nicely fresh and tasty.
The first course was a choice of salad, soup or juice. We had the soup of the day which was a broccoli soup with beef tartare. The soup was very creamy and smooth with a bit of spice in the broth or maybe in the seeds floating in it. It was full of wonderful broccoli flavor. A small oval of very tasty beef tartar was in the middle and it mixed surprisingly well with the soup. I wasn’t sure but I found I really liked mixing a bit of the tartar with a spoonful of the lovely soup.
Next was a choice of lamb, veal, hake, meagre or pasta. We chose the Meagre, which is a Greek fish. It was a roasted filet plated with saffron-Fregola Sarda and a fennel and anise seed sauce. The very firm fish was moist and the fregola pasta was perfectly seasoned with saffron and other herbs. The fennel could have been cooked a tad more but it was a nice accompaniment for the good sized portion of fish. The skin on the fish was crisped perfectly but overall I’d call it a good not great dish.
Dessert was a choice of fruit, chocolate cake or plum cake with caramel ice cream – which is what we chose. The crust on the tart was a bit tough on the top edge but nicely cooked on the underside. The upper part of the crust was more doughy. The large pieces of plum were hard to cut and the ice cream melted very quickly, although it did have little crunchies underneath it. Between the two were a couple fresh raspberries. It was well flavored but not a killer sweet fix.
Final treats were red wine jellies, that tasted more like chocolate and a citrus fondant in white chocolate that was smooth and nice.
