Chalet 18 – French-Japanese fusion

For Valentine’s day, I was looking to go to a romantic, even nicer than usual restaurant and remembered to have walked by this charming little place on a small side street off Leipziger Straße in Bockenheim. Chalet 18 is an ideal restaurant to celebrate a special day. It offers an ambitious modern cuisine of French-Japanese fusion and the ambiance is of a cozy French bistro style. Everything, starting from the website presentation, the service, the interior style and of course the food and wine was of really high quality.

Chalet 18 offers 5-7 course menus or dishes à la carte. On the menu are interesting dishes that combine Japanese flavors / Asian cooking styles with French ingredients and classic dishes. We first received a started as a gift from the kitchen which definitely had already a presentational wow effect. A shrimp salad, popcorn, nuts, a pea soup and tiny pieces of pork belly were presented on very cute Japanese dinnerware. After a short wait, we received our main dish order, which were Asian-style dumplings filled with goose and duck meat. Since the dumplings happened to be quite small, the friendly service told us that we will receive two plates instead of one - a very thoughtful gesture from the Chalet 18 team. The taste of our dishes was as good as the visualization.

As a dessert, we order a cheese plate that consisted of three different varieties. Especially the camembert was better than expected. I am big fan of hard cheeses though and I would like to have enjoyed one more cheese in the Gruyère direction. Anyway, it was a great dessert. The plate came with a basket of bread that was just delicious. The bread has small raisins and dried fruit in it. Finally, we enjoyed a fantastic bottle of wine accompanying our Valentine’s dinner.

Overall, Chalet 18 was a total success and definitely met my expectations of a classy French bistro. The cuisine impressed with being inventive and modern. The prices were appropriate to the high standard and quality. It was ideal for a special occasion.

Style: Dinner

Cuisine: French/Japanese

Location: Bockenheim

Website: http://www.chalet-18.de/