Club Paris (update), Anchorage, 7/29/21

Club Paris was visited by Frankie in 2018 for lunch so this visit we decided to have dinner.  It is an old school place but the interior has been changed quite a bit to deal with the Covid pandemic.  Tables are now separated by dividers and so room shots are difficult.  The building dates back 100 years and the current restaurant to the 1950s when I understand the owner married a French woman and he decorated the place with lots of Paris images to make her feel at home. The Selman family bought it in the 1970s with many of the staff having worked there for more than 25 years.  They are known for their steaks and seafood as well as their pink neon sign out front featuring an Eiffel Tower.  It is a long space with a curved bar taking up most of the front room.  Music is in the background, the lights are low and they did have one nightly special to add to the menu.  Their wine selection was not as appealing as their cocktails so we enjoyed martinis with dinner.

Interior

Food

 

Onion Rings are fresh jumbo rings dipped in house beer batter and fried crisp.  They are fresh, hot and crisp.  The onion stuck in the ring when you bit it and they needed no saucing, but they came with ketchup.  They were delicious and a real treat to eat.  Crisp, sweet with light salt they were a perfect appetizer.

 

All main plates come with a salad with a choice of dressing and I chose blue cheese.  It was a mix of lettuces, carrot shreds, purple cabbage shreds and croutons with some cucumber slices and a couple of grape cherry tomatoes.  The dressing was on top and there was plenty to go around.  Not the strongest blue cheese but pleasant enough and the croutons tasted house made.  It was ordinary but still good.

 

Warm soft bread came with the salad.  It was a small individual loaf with no crisp crust, just soft doughy interior.  Butter packets were on the table and it was good but more like a giant roll than bread.

 

Filet Mignon at 14 ounces is their signature steak, the most tender cut of beef in the steak family and it comes with a choice of potato for which we picked fries.  It was cooked a perfect rare with a warm center and was nicely seasoned and charred on the exterior.  Wonderfully tender, it’s still tenderloin so we did add a butter packet to the top of it to give it richness and with that, it was juicy and well flavored.  The fries are now a coated variety and as such stayed nicely crisp but lost some potato flavor.  The garnish of a cinnamon apple slice and some curly leaf parsley on lettuce was old school on steroids, and I politely moved it aside.  It was a big enough plate of food that I couldn’t eat it all and so passed on dessert.