Café Provençe
Dining Well in Prarie Village

When you want a really nice meal in Kansas, you frequently have to go to Missouri. So the groups filling up the 14 tables and booths at Café Provençe in Prairie Village Shopping Center seem truly pleased to have found dining gratification “close in.” Just recently opened, the restaurant is the second for owner Patrick Quillec, whose Hannah Bistro on 39th Street has deservedly retained its popularity.

It’s early yet on a typical weekday evening, but Café Provençe is bustling. We eat at the bar, since we lack a reservation, and we ignore the mandatory TV, the salvation of the lonely. Fortunately, we have each other and the menu appears diverting, the bartender is knowledgeable and accommodating, and there are 13 wines to choose from by the glass—perhaps the most helpful antidote for a long day. The country paté our neighbors are having with their wine looks like it might help, too.

Instead, we try the scallops, added to slow-cooked mushrooms in a cream sauce and served in a shell. Very tasty. There are six other appetizers including steak tartare, escargot, and what is bound to be superb if Hannah Café is the model, the Prince Edward mussels. (We try those at a later lunch, and they are (almost) the same, oh sweet blessing.)

With the ambience of a (clean) French café, the place is simple and attractive. You can sit at sidewalk tables, but inside are buttery walls, a blue-and-yellow provincial print on the banquettes and doorway, French posters, crisp white tablecloths, and candles on the tables. The crowd is generally a bit older and looks prosperous, which they need to be here. The full bar, with its seven stools, is busy tonight.

The menu is largely the same for lunch and dinner, with heftier prices at dinner, obviously. Three salads green the menu; we choose the arugula, walnuts, and Roquefort cheese “crumbles”—big, delicious, soft chunks—which are nicely dominated by a lemon vinaigrette. There is a pretty lobster bisque, but digging down through the French onion soup is a more satisfying experience, as it is thick and cheesy, just as it should be.

Entrées are varied. Frog legs, relatively uncommon in Prairie Village, simmered in garlic butter ($16) are one of the most popular dishes, and are moist and meaty little devils. The pan-seared loin of lamb ($23) with Dijon mustard and breadcrumbs is distinctively different, but one has to really like mustard to like this preparation. There are two steaks, and my portly companion thoroughly enjoys his “Filet au Roquefort” ($22), which is a tender cut topped with the blue cheese butter and a red wine sauce. Other selections include coq au vin at $16 and two pasta dishes—cheese-filled tortellini in a garlic-cream sauce and porcini-mushroom ravioli in fennel broth ($14 for dinner, $10 for lunch).

The desserts are prepared in house and vary daily. A lemon tart resting in a shiny raspberry sauce and with fresh whipped cream is a great finish, as is the French press coffee done at your table (or bar, in our case).

If one could live for food alone, without intrusion by the world, Café Provençe, right in the heart of Prairie Village Shopping Center, might be a good place to start.