Given my complete disdain at the lack of culture and diversity in Boise, I tend to resort to eating lots of crappy food here to bide my time. Nothing is more painful than having golf ball sized pieces of overcooked chicken in your carrot-infested Kung Pao Chicken... but I digress.

So, I'll give periodic reviews of various restaurants, good and bad here in Boise. Supposedly, there has been a considerable number of SoCal folk moving up here; so maybe this will be pertinent to someone besides me.

Le Cafe de Paris, on Capitol Blvd, near the State Captiol building. As you can probably guess, it's a French restaurant. We stopped there for a dessert at the advice of a friend. And we weren't disappointed. We ordered standard chocolate mousse ($4) for me, and a chef's special "half baked chocolate cake" ($7.50) for my wife. The next day, given our pleasant dessert, we ordered a lunch that can be best described as a mustard chicken puff pastry ($8.50).

The mousse was a strong offering. My experiences with mousse has varied; the cheaper restaurants will use obviously cheap chocolate or not fully integrate the chocolate base; both leaving an inconsistant texture. I found this mousse very satisfying. I believe they used a relatively high "cocoa count" bittersweet chocolate base, as the mousse was somewhat denser than I was used to. However, they still captured the smooth and sweet texture that you expect out of a good mousse. I would recommend this dish to anyone who enjoys a thick chocolate mousse. +1 for good recipe, +1 for smoothness, +1 texture.

My wife allowed me a few bites of the chocolate cake, and it was especially good. Since this was a special order, we received this fresh out of the oven... and extra plus in my book. The cake was accompanied by a light vanilla based cream sauce. You could taste a hint of lemon and cinnamon. The cake itself was surprisingly light in texture. Most Boise-style pastries are overbuttered and oversugared, and I was pleased that this cake resisted that trend. I think the price is a bit high for this dish, but it was still a top notch dessert. +1 freshness, +1 good sauce, +1 appropriate sweetness, -1 cost

The puff pastry was filled with chicken medallions bathed in a mustard based cream soup. The pastry was baked uniformly; no overcooked edges and the layers were preserved without deformation. They went a bit butter heavy with this dish; I personally like my puff pastry lighter than what was offered, however, the mustard sauce was appropriately creamy and not overwhelmingly buttery. I don't reccomend this dish for the light eaters out there, but for us computer geeks, this does really hit the spot well. +1 good pastry, +1 good sauce, -1 overbuttered.