Chez Napoleon
“I loved the house red (wine), you cant go wrong with the souffle, they do it just like in France.”
“Our waitress was a very nice older French lady who recommended the wild boar stew and rabbit.”
“Chez Napoleon is a wonderful family owned restaurant since 1960 in the Theater District.”
Chez Napoleon
Takes Reservations: Yes
Accepts Credit Cards: Yes
Wheelchair Accessible: Yes
Waiter Service: Yes
Price range.
$$$ Price range $31-60
8 reviews
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Wonderful meal with very nice staff. Not sure where the bad reviews for service are coming from. Anyway though, this isn't a complaint of others' reviews. It's mine.
Oh yeah, one more tip before I begin. If you do not like garlic/pepper to an extent, you probably won't like the entrees here.
Also, if you have no clue what you are going to get and you want a single excellent dish, the coq au vin is excellent.
Anyway:
Went here with two others
To drink:
Cote du Rhone: 10 (him)
Good Rhone, but then again, it's a French wine.
Cote du Provance: 10
I haven't seen this wine before so I got a glass of it. It's a chilled very dry Rose. If you want something a bit more substantial than a white but still as dry as some, I'd recommend this.
Appetizers:
Bread: Came with their homemade vinaigrette
As it is a french place, bread is served first, various types. The bread were fine, the vinaigrette solid.
…
Rilletes de Canard: 11 (Myself)
Rilletes is basically a cooled paste in this case with duck (well usually pork but this works as I prefer duck anyway.) You can think of it as similar to pate but it is a bit thicker thanks to the pieces. You spread it on the pieces of bread they have there (or you can eat it solely a bit like me but the other way is better.) Portion was fine. It came with two cornichons (those lil' french pickles) and some iceberg.
4.25
Lentil Soup: 10 (him)
Was the soup of the day. Tried some of his but only a bit. Large portion for a French restaurant. I won't judge as I only had a little.
Mains:
Cassoulet: 28 (me)
I love cassoulet. It's a slow cooked stew made from white beans and it is filled with a piece of sausage, a lot of duck, and some other meat. There was a little bit too much pepper on top but otherwise, the dish was excellent.
4.6
Ris De Veau: (i.e. Sweetbreads) with mushroom sauce: 28 (him)
Perfectly cooked sweetbreads with an excellent mushroom sauce. There really isn't much to complain about here. Like her dish, it came with some spinach.
4.7
Coq au vin: 24 (her)
Excellent sized portion. The wine sauce here is so dark and luscious and the mushrooms were excellent. Duck's texture was excellent also. A good amount of garlic was here also. Like his dish, it came with some spinach.
4.8
Cerrises Jubilee: 12 (me)
Cherries are excellent. There was one with a pit but oh well. There was a lot of alcohol in here, almost a bit too much (but better for there to be too much than too little)
4.4
Coupe Aux Marrons (Glacés) vanilla ice cream with chestnuts : 12 (him)
I preferred this. Chestnuts had a wonderful texture.
4.5
Summary:
For once I generally preferred the dishes that other people got though everything was excellent. The server (an old French woman) was very kind. Waters were refilled often and we were able to stay as long as we wanted to as it should be in a good French place.
4.25+4.6+4.7+4.8+4.4+4.5
27.25/30
or 4.55/5
Excellent meal.
Escargot and baked clams are their most special dish there.
It's a home style french restaurant and very pricey.
It took an hour for it to be cooked and served full of European style in such a big modern city.
Good taste +1.
I've been here so many times I can't even count and I love it so much that I almost didn't want to write this review and let people know about it. I know, selfish. The pictures of the food here don't look very appetizing since a lot of them are very saucy, but that is deceiving!
I think the thing I love the most about this restaurant is the small, rustic French restaurant feel.
Bread: I absolutely LOVE the vinagrette that comes with the bread! Although the bread is just okay, the vinagrette. Amazing. When I come here, I actually buy bottles of the vinagrette to go.
Escargots: Delicious! They come in these little ceramic shells. So cute. Butter and garlicky. The sauce is great for dipping your bread in!
Veal Kidneys: My absolute favorite dish here. It is cooked in a light mustard sauce. Seriously, so amazing. Get it medium rare. They are so tender and juicy. It comes with rice, although the rice isn't that great. It's okay, the kidneys make up for it.
Rabbit: The sauce for this is soooo good. Although the rabbit is a little tough, it's delicious and the perfect combination with the mustard and white wine sauce.
Calf Brain: It came in a black butter sauce. This was my first time ever trying calf brain. Although the sauce was so flavorful and delicious, the brain itself still kinda grossed me out. It tastes like soft tofu. If you like brain, you should try this!
Coq Au Vin: This chicken in red wine sauce dish is really good. The chicken is tender and the sauce is super flavorful.
Frog Legs: Yum! They are tender, cripsy on the outside, and lemon and buttery. If you don't know what frog legs taste like, they kind of taste like dark meat chicken but more tender. The only thing is that this dish is really small.
Venison: The venison was the special for the day with a whole green peppercorn sauce. I've never had venison before, so it was very interesting! Definitely tastes gamey but it wasn't tough and it was sliced thinly.
Duck Breast: I love duck, but this dish isn't for me as the orange glaze sauce is a bit too sweet for me. But, the duck itself was cooked well.
Scallops: Although this was my least favorie dish (I prefer seared scallops), it was still delicious! The scallops are baked and covered in cheese.
Souffle: TIP! You have to order your souffle with your entree as it takes a while to cook. I've tried both the vanilla and chocolate souffles here. Both are SO GOOD!! They are not too sweet and are fluffy and moist. You must try this if you come here. Although it's $20, it's HUGE for a souffle!
**All entrees come with a side of vegetable.
BTW, if you couldn't tell if I enjoy this restaurant, I definitely do. 🙂
I've been wanting to come here for awhile for the souffle. The restaurant itself is pretty small and you won't even have space to move your chair back. When we asked about the souffles while we order our other dishes, they said they will not be making any souffles since the restaurant is busy. I got really disappointed since my main goal was to try the souffle. Then after a few minutes, they came back to us and said they will be making souffles again (maybe because we are going to order 3 souffles). Anyways, the souffle was definitely really really fluffy. I thought the souffles will be small after looking at the pictures on yelp, but let me tell you- the souffles are huge!!! HUGE!! The vanilla souffle was definitely better than the coffee souffle since you can taste the vanilla and the egg in it. The coffee souffle was a bit overwhelming but still good. The escargot was in ceramic shells and tasted pretty good. However, the baked calms were better. After seeing people's reviews and pictures, I've decided to get the rabbit stew. The rabbit stew looked so delicious on the plate however it was a bit bitter. It would've been so much better if only it didn't have that bitter taste to it. The steak with blue cheese on top was alright. The blue cheese was overwhelming but the steak was cooked perfectly. The best dish of the night for me was the duck. The duck was juicy and delicious!! Definitely get the duck!! Overall, I had a really high expectation for this place before coming and now I only think it was alright and overpriced. The souffle was delicious and all, but not worth $25 each.
I had a craving for French Onion Soup one day so I persuaded my fiancee to come here with me after I found this place on Yelp (duh).
We called half an hour beforehand to see if we could get a reservation and we could – when we got their we realized why – it was pretty empty for 8pm on a Saturday. The decor/layout is a little weird – there's no room at the bar and the 2 rooms are cramped and dated – but that is part of the charm and we enjoyed looking at the art and pictures from France.
The onion soup was very good, although it could have done with some more stock I would argue. My fiancee had the baked mussels which were also good but smothered in garlic – as I would expect from a good French restaurant!
For mains my fiancee had the beef stew and she couldnt get enough of it. I had the mussels which was a generous portion but not the best mariniere sauce I've ever had.
Just like the layout, the service was very quirky and we could never really work out who our waitress was, one was overly friendly and the other a bit standoffish – but very french.
by 830/9pm the place had filled up more and the atmosphere improved. Its mostly small intimate tables (so best for a date night) and I'm glad I wasn't part of the large table of 6 as they looked really crammed in at the back of the room.
I'm not often found in a French restaurant outside of France, particularly in NYC where there are so many other cuisines I generally prefer, but I would happily go back here
I'm teetering between a 4.5 and 5 —
When you walk in it's a bit musty smelling and very tight. The bar would barely sit a person comfortably without being bothersome to the table next to it. However, there is more seating around the bend. Again, it's a tight seating but at least more tables to choose from.
We started with the house red, very delish. We had about 2 different waitresses which i wasn't really sure who was the main and who may be an assistant. One out-shined the other.
We had the french onion soup (i would've liked a bit more beef to the stock but it was good) and the baked mussels (which were steaming garlic but didn't taste as much and were very good but HOT!).
We had the mussels in a cream sauce and the beef stew for our mains and they did not disappoint. Table-side service for the beef stew and they were very attentive. The boiled potatoes in the stew lacked seasoning and i barely ate thru 1 (i love potatoes by the way). the beef i couldn't get enough of. i was basically spooning the sauce at the end.
Both portions were very generous (2 plates each) to ease the pricing of the restaurant.
all in all – a definite secret gem off the theatre district but close enough for tourists, and for us HK locals – a spot i know i'll be able to get a great meal and service.
definitely will return.
A bit of France in the middle of Hells Kitchen. Our waitress was very nice. We had great service except when we were paying, we wanted to split 4 credit cards evenly and heard the back guy loudly say "four credit cards, ugh."
I tried their prefix menu which was pretty good. Not amazing but definitely not bad.
Just a note; some of the souffles contain alcohol and some don't so if that's an issue for you, make sure to ask before hand.
Decided last minute to have dinner in the Theater District on a Thursday night – no reservation so we searched on Yelp for some French food – Chez Napoleon ended up being our pick.
The first thing I noticed when arriving at the small restaurant was the intimate vibe the tight space created. The place would not be good for big groups, but nice for 2 to 4 people. The decor is interesting – I think it's meant to create a sense of tradition and the fact the family-run restaurant has been around for a long time (the matriarch/chef Grand Mere Marguerite, who is 94 according to the wait staff, still visits every night I believe). It's not your typical trendy/hipster hotspot – the patrons tend to be older.
To start, we ordered the escargot (pretty standard) and the pate. The latter was notable as it was definitely house-made. It did not taste as "fatty" and went really well with the chips that came with the dinner rolls. The dinner rolls were an assortment of bread, one was particularly good (brown and with flax seeds), and served with a special sauce that almost tasted like a sweet vinaigrette salad dressing (I liked it but my friend was not a fan).
My friend and I both ordered from the daily specials- he the fish (grilled trout) and I the meat (sliced veal leg). When the dishes came it was assumed that the order was the other way around – just like when the white (his) and red (mine) wines came. I could not decide on a wine so I had asked for a recommendation, and the waitress (an older lady) gave me one right away, which I thought went great with my entree.
The entrees were done well. At first I was surprised that the sliced veal was served with fries, but soon realized it was an excellent pairing. The trout was deboned skilfully, which made it easier to eat. Both were served with a creamed spinach – so rich but worth every calorie eaten.
Overall, Chez Napolean is up to par with some of the other French restaurants I've dined at. I would recommend it for those looking to have real French food, and to practice the language a bit (I tried to in my broken French :).