Like most chapters of your twenties, my time in the Grove eventually came to a close. By the time I met my husband nearly 10 years later, I was living 30 minutes north of it, and my reliable safety net of a bistro had faded into the background. We actually tried to go to Le Bouchon early in our courtship \u2014 a poorly thought-out attempt to show him my old stomping grounds \u2014 but we arrived too late and the dining room was packed, and it took five years to finally get him back to that dining room.<\/p>\n
Recently, I returned to Le Bouchon du Grove, this time with my husband and in-laws to find out if the mussels \u2014 and my memories \u2014 of the place had held up.<\/p>\n
With the windows open to the street and nearly a dozen ceiling fans whirring on high as the speakers blended 2000\u2019s pop with sports commentary, our first dish arrived.<\/p>\n
The escargot came in a small cast-iron pan with the parsley butter still bright, hot, and bubbling as it hits the table. The croque monsieur was served on a crusty baguette rather than standard sandwich bread, sturdy enough to support a fried egg if you\u2019re inclined to ask for one on top (and you should). Swiss cheese, used in place of the traditional Gruy\u00e8re, gave the onion soup a nuttier, softer profile, a subtle detail I\u2019ve enjoyed for years without ever quite pinning down why.<\/p>\n
My mother-in-law spent much of the meal asking our server about the side salad\u2019s vinaigrette. It was sharp enough to cut through the richness of the French dishes, and she was bewildered to learn it was just standard red wine vinegar. She even tried to charm the recipe out of him to recreate it at home. Finally, then there were the moules frites, served in what appeared to be a vintage Le Creuset. They arrived steaming, accompanied by a massive pile of salty fries. Even on a sweltering Saturday in June, with the temperature hitting 100 degrees, nearly every table seemed to have an order.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve been coming here for more than a decade, though my company has changed. The first dates are gone, replaced by my husband and in-laws, yet the moules frites remain exactly the same. Weekend brunch still includes a complimentary mimosa, just as it did when I first felt like I\u2019d discovered a secret. There is a certain joy in walking into a place already knowing what you\u2019ll order and being genuinely glad about it, a feeling I couldn\u2019t have articulated at 24, but now realize is rare.<\/p>\n
Coconut Grove isn\u2019t the neighborhood I moved into years ago. That stretch of Main Highway has seen 30 years of openings and closings, but every time a nearby spot closes, the ones that remain feel more significant. Le Bouchon has endured while the area transformed around it, preserving a version of the Grove we thought was already lost.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Like most chapters of your twenties, my time in the Grove eventually came to a close. By the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":338321,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[123,125,124],"class_list":["post-338320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=338320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338320\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/338321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=338320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=338320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=338320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}