Luscious Life
Welcome the Newcomer
by PHILIP INNES

For a town of its size and sophistication, Tarrytown boasts far too few intimate little restaurants serving top-notch food. So in rides Chiboust to the rescue, chivalrously throwing in a first-rate French bakery for good measure.

Open slightly less than one year, Chiboust is the brainchild of owner Jill Rose, an award-winning pastry chef.

Rose's leadership of this bistro is stellar. She not only has shown herself to have unerring instincts, but she has surrounded herself with good people. Her chef de cuisine, Alberto Tirrito, previously worked at Little Palm Island Resort in the Florida Keys and taught at the Urban Horizon Center of Culinary Arts in the Bronx, while her pastry chef, Manuel Sepulveda, was one of her assistants when she was pastry chef. Both are C.I.A. grads like Rose.

Since Chiboust bills itself, in part, as a wine bar, it's only fitting that it offers an accessible collection of tempting wines ($24 - $300), including nine by the glass ($6 - $10). Reds and whites are further broken down into Mediterranean, New World and Old World wines, although the first and third categories would seem to overlap. We took great pleasure from a '98 Prado Rey Crianza, Ribero del Duero, Spain ($39), a soft lick-your-lips-good Tempranillo.

Crusty white sourdough bread spread with good hotel butter held our appetites in check while we perused the menu. The bread was made off-premises, not surprising when one considers that in France, bread bakeries --boulangeries-- are generally separate enterprises from pastry shops -- pâtisseries. In the United States, we have a tendency to roll the two entities into one.

Studying the menu left my companion and I sitting on the horns of a dilemma. Should we select our own dishes or arrange a chef tasting? When everything entices, as it did at Chiboust, the latter approach seemed the clear choice. And so we embarked on a rudderless course, allowing ourselves to be driven by the whim of the chef. He certainly never steered us wrong.

We began with the soup du jour, an acorn squash soup ($8) that dodged the usual pitfall of being overly sweet. A little salt offset its natural sweetness, while a little crunchiness in the form of tiny carrot cutouts contrasted with its smoothness. In fact, it was smoother than most squash soups, making us wonder if it had been strained through cheesecloth.

It was certainly no strain on us to try two salads simultaneously. The first salad was very good, a medley of bitter greens in a red wine and shallot vinaigrette fleshed out (so to speak) with perfectly seasoned duck confit, Roquefort cheese and toasted walnuts ($15). The use of blue cheese was moderate, where a chef possessed of less subtlety might have turned the salad into an uncleared minefield.

The second salad was fabulous, a lobster salad special ($18) that really deserves to find a home on the regular menu right after the crab Napoleon. Beautiful pieces of lobster, claw and nuckle, and buttery chunks of avocado nestled between two brioche toasts, also buttery, a pile of mâche and red endive leaves. The brioche was made on the premises, brioche being as much a provence of boulangeries as pâtisseries. Balancing the butterness of the avocado and the brioche was a tart passion fruit vinaigrette worthy of passing up a date with Eva Longoria. Well, almost.

Why not have both? If you can score a date with Longoria, or any other Desperate Housewife, follow up the lobster salad with the bouillabaisse ($24). Like Longoria, Chiboust's bouillabaisse is a stunner: mussels, cockles, squid, whitefish, and tomato concassé in a big bowl of shellfish broth. Balancing atop the shellfish were long, thick fingers of toasted bread spread thickly with rouille.

"What's rouille?" inquired my dining companion.

"A red pepper and garlic mayonnaise that is a traditional Provençal accompaniment to fish soup." I replied.

"Sounds like another reason to drink red wine," he surmised.

"As if we needed one," I retorted, smiling.

Another entrée we tried was poached Alaskan cod ($22), a soup-like preparation featuring a big flaky fillet in a parsley-scented fumet with orzo pasta and tomato. A toasted garlic baguette balanced across the rim of the elegant white bowl was as long and tapered as a rowing scull, while slim pieces of orzo flashed like minnows in the broth. The cod could hardly have been fresher or better prepared, but lacked the excitement of the marvelous bouillabaisse.

Grilled lamb sirloin ($26) featured beautiful pink slices of Australian free-range lamb, piquant grilled tomato and sweet tender grilled eggplant. Where the origin of 90 percent of the items served at Chiboust seemed more French than (other) Mediterranean, this dish could have originated in Greece, or somewhere east of the Bosporus and Dardanelles Straits.

To this point we had allowed ourseleves to be guided by Chiboust's chef. At the risk of gilding the lily, we requested the restaurant's torchon de foie gras ($18), another special deserving a permanent spot among the starters. Two grey-pink slices of poached goose liver were served with warm pear, brioche toast, and a light and wonderful Muscat de Patras ($4). I would happily have made dessert of the foie gras.

However, the desserts are not to be missed at a bakery of Chiboust's caliber. What a pleasure for someone like myself who eats out almost every night to be face something other than the usual suspects. Chiboust draws its name from a 19th century pastry chef known for his gâteau Saint Honoré, which used his Chiboust cream which is an Italian meringue folded with lemon curd. So not surprisingly the featured dessert is a Chiboust ($6), a sablé crust cradling a baked lemon-lavender custard topped with Chiboust creme and garnished with homemade papaya jam and white chocolate shavings and curls.

Other desserts also excelled. A lovely, scallop-edged, plum frangipane tart ($6) also utilized a sablé crust to showcase its almond cream and baked plum layers. A perfect flourless chocolate cake (described by my companion as "hitting pay dirt") was accompanied by a scoop of homemade mixed berry ice cream ($8.50).

Chiboust is by far the most stylish entry in the miniature Restaurant Row near the top of Main Street that includes American, Caribbean, Greek, Italian, Mexican, Dominican, and now French-Mediterranean food. The slender eatery, formerly a Laundromat, features a handsome low-ceilinged bar area with backless white stools in front. Beyond the bar area is the high-ceilinged dining room where a white wall opposes a brick wall interrupted only by a narrow, wall-length mirror. Separation between the tables on the east side of the dining room is achieved by means of tall white fabric blinds modishly lit from the bottom.

A fan suspended from the ceiling resembles a replica of an old-fashioned airplane propeller. Above the bar, there's a castle-slit window that appears to let management keep tabs on the restaurant from the second floor office. It must be working--the service we received was uniformly excellent. The restaurant seemed as well-managed as its food was well-prepared.

Yes, Tarrytown needed this newcomer. Chiboust should give this town a boost.