For a slow and quiet Sunday, my sister and I used up her Groupon coupon on Cafe Massilia located in cute Old Town Monrovia. Settled on a small side street, I would have never discovered it without the help of Groupon. Contrary to it's mild presence from the outside, however, the restaurant was very impressionable on the inside.
Walking into a warmly lit room painted in deep red and decked with timeless decor and small tables, the atmosphere was very cozy. We were quickly greeted with a friendly welcome from the waitress who spoke with a heavy French accent. The whole setting reminded me of when my siblings and I were young and we went on vacation in France, eating crazy family meals in restaurants where we couldn't read what we were ordering. Luckily, below each of the French names of the dishes at Cafe Massilia was a very attractive English description.
Adding to the intimate atmosphere, our appetizers shot our excitement (and expectations) through the roof. We ordered Escargot and the Salade d'Endives as starter dishes and both did not disappoint.
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| (A half-finished) Escargot Au Beurre d'Ail from Cafe Massilia. |
Everything about this dish was perfect: the way the escargot was cooked, the presentation in that we did not need to fork the meat out from the shell manually, and the fact that the oil that it was drenched in made the perfect dipping sauce for a basket full of bread.
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| Salade d'Endives from Cafe Massilia. |
Our starter salad was as equally promising. It smartly paired blue cheese with apples and walnuts within the greens, leading to a combination of flavors that I didn't even know was possible. After finishing up the salad and the escargot, my sister and I were energized with anticipation for our entrees.
Unfortunately, the entrees we ordered left much to be desired. Together, we ordered a baked sea bass and the roasted duck leg with orange sauce to share.
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| Loup De Mer Massilia (baked sea bass) from Cafe Massilia. |
I could not have been more disappointed by this dish. The texture of the fish was incredibly rough, which was completely the opposite of why we ordered it. We decided on the sea bass, because it is usually prepared very smooth and juicy, but the fish here was dry and unimpressive. Interestingly enough, the menu lists this dish as "The Best of Massilia," but I did not see it as any sort of "best." So then I moved on to the duck, hoping that it would make us forget what we just tried.
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| Canard a l'Orange (Roasted Duck Leg) from Cafe Massilia. |
Although the duck here was paired with a complementary orange sauce, it tasted no better than the sea bass. There was nothing noteworthy about the dish other than the fact that the meat was not roasted to perfection, but rather rough and dry. Perhaps if my sister and I walked into Cafe Massilia with low expectations we may have been impressed, but the setting was so precisely decorated and themed, and the appetizers were done so nicely, that we could not help but have some higher expectations. The only redeeming quality was that we have a Groupon discount for the dinner tonight.
Even so, we thought that we'd give their desserts a try, since we had such mixed thoughts on the dishes before. We ordered their trio sampler of desserts which is "a Sampler of Creme Brulee, Mousse Au Chocolat and Profiteroles."
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| Three Dessert Combination from Cafe Massilia. |
I wish I could say that the dessert was the redeeming dish of the night and made the whole meal satisfying, but this was not the case. Much like the rest of dinner, the dessert was very mixed in quality. The mousse by itself was very rich with flavor and tasty. Likewise, they also served quality creme brulee with the thinnest layer of hardened caramel and the lightest, fluffiest of creams. However, the profiteroles was another expectation left unmet. The pastry encasing the ice cream tasted so stale that I was just glad that there was a generous amount of ice cream to distract from it.
To sum it up, dinner was anticlimactic and merely mediocre. Don't be fooled by our happy faces; this was taken before we tried the entrees.
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| My sister (left) and me at Cafe Massilia. |
Cafe Massilia
110 E Lemon Ave
Monrovia, CA 91016
(626) 471-3588
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