Pastiche Bistro - Milwaukee, WI
Overall: B
Poulet BLT - Grilled chicken breast, bacon, lettuce, tomato, roasted garlic aoli, harvest bread, gaufrettes
In a continuation of my exploitation of Ritual’s Milwaukee launch, I picked up Pastiche’s Poulet BLT today. A lot of things about this experience felt a little off-kilt. First of all, Pastiche is a French restaurant that is advertising a chicken BLT, which as far I’m aware is entirely an American creation. The only thing french about this was the calling the chicken poulet and the chips gaufrettes (ok, they are gaufrettes and not technically the same as chips, but come on). Anyhow, this is what is and I knew that going in. I was more interested in Pastiche’s reputation as a good restaurant than reputation as a French restaurant.
When it came to the sandwich, it felt like a 90% effort situation in which 100% effort would have been easy. The bacon was rich, the aoli was creamy and balanced well with the vegetables. The bread was mostly background but brought a little bit of flavor and was lightly toasted to not fall apart. The chicken was a bit dry but had a really nice grilled flavor. My big criticism was that the sandwich was incredibly poorly assembled. Specifically, there was one very thick (~3/4″) slab of chicken that only filled out about half of the sandwich. It should have been butterflied or sliced and laid across the entirely of the bread. This feels like such an obvious thing to do that would have made a huge impact in getting the sandwich to “great”. Similarly, the gaufrettes were well cooked but completely unseasoned. A little salt or, preferably, some herbs or seasoned oil, would have made them much more flavorful. Just seems too obvious.