5110 Main St., Williamsville NY 14221
Phone: 716.631.2725
Rating:
[learn more]Pros:
A modern American menu with some international inspiration; some nice foods, particularly appetizers, coupled with decidedly friendly service.
Cons:
Slow food preparation and high prices take away from food quality, which ranges from good to okay to bad; calamari was grossly undercooked. Quantities sometimes weak.
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American Fine Dining French Italian Williamsville
"Our hope is that Le Metro rejuvenates its menu, picks up the pace a bit, and works on improving the quality of its items for the price."
Things change. People change. So do restaurants. Williamsville's Le Metro, once known more for its coffees and baked goods than its bar and dining, has over the years evolved into a typical supper club - albeit a good one - complete with patio-style outdoor dining and a waiting area-slash-bar dividing two nice rooms full of tables. There are the requisite prices, with half of the appetizers in the double digits and the other half in the high singles, pastas starting at $16 - vegetables only - and meat entrees at $22. And there's friendly service, pleasant enough that you could forgive waiting an hour for your entrees to be delivered. But should you? Our most recent experience suggests otherwise; thankfully, the owners' almost adjacent Sole offers superior options.
The Story: There were once two Le Metro restaurants, one on Elmwood, one in Williamsville, but the Elmwood version was last year renamed to "Mode Urban Bistro," taking the businesses' web site with it. Now, the Walker Center location of Le Metro is all that's left, along with most of its menu, ambience, and patrons; this is still a place where people tend to be dressed smart casual or better, the environment is lit for fancy date ambience, and there's a dinnertime crowd around the small but central bar. Though the menu is classically Western New York Americana - you can order a Delmonico steak ($28) or a pizza ($13 and up) - there are one or two surprises, such as bowls of grossly expensive Vietnamese Pho soup ($16 and up) alongside the "Pot Pie du Jour." Otherwise, there's something lifeless and samey about most of the menu options, which skew heavily towards pastas and salads; they're crowd fare, designed not to elevate the palate, but rather to satisfy known tastes. That's certainly not a bad thing if executed well, but the choices rank low on the excitement scale, and when old standards aren't delicious, the experience suffers.
Highs: Of the many items we ordered, we were most impressed by the Bread & Spreads appetizer ($8), a plate stacked high with grilled, oiled slices of bread - cut thick - and served with our choice of two white cups of toppings. We picked the Tapenade, a black spread that mixed olives and olive oil with capers, herbs, and garlic, plus the Agrodolce, a red spread made from mashed red peppers and olive oil. The beautiful plate was enough to sate four people, though its properly grilled pieces masked a layer of overcooked ones in the center, a theme that we noticed later in reverse.
We also enjoyed one of the day's special appetizers, a pair of Crab Cakes ($10), which were right-sized, perfectly crisp outside, and delightfully soft inside, each bite of coral-colored crabmeat absolutely satisfying in rich flavor and texture. Not as welcome was the plate's highly vinegared mini-salad, a mix of vegetable scraps that took away from the crab rather than adding to or accenting it.
The last of the truly good items was a Vanilla Creme Brulee, presented textbook-like in a shallow white dish, custard on the bottom and flame-caramelized sugar coating forming a crunchy top that was made to be shattered and enjoyed. As with other vanilla variants on this dish, the bean's distinctive flavor masked the natural egg taste of the custard; other than our desire for twice as much, there was literally nothing to take issue with in this dish.
Lows: As one might gather from omissions in the Highs, Le Metro's Lows list could run long; we will try our best to keep it short. The Moules Provencal ($10), an appetizer-sized plate of mussels served in a white wine sauce, proved far more shell and vegetable than meat; the bodies of the mussels were quite possibly the smallest and least succulent in our memories. More offensive was the Calamari ($12 single, $14 double), a plate of batter-coated, deep-fried squid that was notable for the tiny squid pieces, the abundance of batter, and the shock that came when we discovered the center was basically a goo of undercooked seafood and breading. We were impressed by the presence of three dipping sauces - a sweet chili, spiced tomato, and buttery mustard - but so put off by the rest of the dish that we returned it to our server; she graciously offered us a complimentary dessert as an offset.
That gesture, while much appreciated, wasn't enough to erase our feelings about the rest of the food. Separate diners at our table pronounced Le Metro's Surf and Turf Salad ($16) - a mix of filet, shrimp, greens, mushrooms and peppers - and the $25 Sesame Crusted Tuna, flavored with a little wasabi and topped with fried rice noodles, okay but not great. Negative comparisons were drawn to dishes that we'd enjoyed the night before at Le Metro's sister restaurant, Sole. No one was sick, but no one was thrilled, either.
At dessert time, most of the table held off on the options, which came across as plain - a "chocolate cake," for instance - and lacking in the restaurant's once famed baked goods department. Coffee was available, and fine, but traditional accompaniments such as biscotti were not. This was a minor disappointment, but suggested that Le Metro's "Bakery & Cafe" days have passed.
It's hard for us to speculate as to what exactly was going on at Le Metro on the night of our visit, but we can say that the service was an unusual combination of "cool and slow;" we had the sense that our server was patiently waiting for our items to come out, and trying her best to keep us refreshed with drinks and friendly conversation in the meanwhile. Regardless, we arrived at the restaurant at 6, had only Bread and Spread to eat until a little after 7, and then saw all of our other items arrive at once - all warm, none crackling hot. It was enough to test our patience a bit, but thanks to the server's demeanor, not enough to reduce the tip.
The Verdict: All in all, though we were fans of the place some time ago, we haven't been thrilled by our most recent meals at Le Metro, and this last one was probably enough to keep us away for a while; high prices combined with so-so food and slow delivery aren't typically the recipe for a satisfying meal. While there were certain elements of the meal that we'd call legitimately good, and potentially worthy of a higher rating, the other items and the speed weighed the place down on balance. Our hope is that Le Metro rejuvenates its menu, picks up the pace a bit, and works on improving the quality of its items for the price.
