Last night, we did the second of our new monthly date nights. We went to a restaurant that I run past fairly regularly, and for some reason it’s always seemed intriguing.
We went to Napoleon Bistro on Columbia Road (Warning: Their website is a horrific flash piece of crap). We were thinking about eating outside, but it was a little muggy. And, it turns out we made the right choice, as a group who went outside to eat just after we arrived came back in shortly after, complaining of bugs.
Anyway, inside the restaurant is nice. They have a rather large bar area, which suggests they get a bar crowd that wasn’t there on a Sunday evening.
The food was good. I had flank steak with a shallot demi glace, whatever that means, and french fries. The wife had a crepe filled with something green and a salad. Crepes, apparently, are their specialty. We split a nice cabernet that I’d never heard of.
Dessert was great, too. We had the “Femme Fatale”, which was a crepe filled with caramelized bananas and topped with ice cream. It tasted a little pumpkiny and delicious.
We would definitely go back. In fact, we might even go back later this week when we have a friend in town who would love the food there.
Back to the website, though. I find that, more often than not, a restaurant website is awful. They usually use a lot of Flash, which is rarely a good idea. When I go to a restaurant website, I’d just like to see a menu, maybe a phone number. I don’t need to experience the ambiance of the place through some crappy Flash interface. I’m also surprised at how often I Google a restaurant and they don’t seem to have a website at all. I know I spend more time online than most people do, but it seems that the benefits of even just an HTML version of the menu and phone number being online would outweigh all the maintenance and hosting costs.
Anyway, I would recommend Napoleon Bistro. Just not their website.