Since the bistro was back big in the city last year, from Rittenhouse to Queen Village, it was only a matter of time before the Main Line got its own taste of l'action. All those suburbanites fueling Stephen Starr's blockbuster Parc and Peter Woolsey's genial Bistrot La Minette should be able to get their cassoulet fix closer to home.
Cassoulet, Wednesday night's plat du jour at the bustling new A la Maison in Ardmore, is certainly one of the best things to eat here, its terra-cotta crock heartily brimming with white beans enriched with duck confit and garlic sausage. It's also hard to go wrong with the big bowl of bacon-laced, brothy mussels, or the retro platter of tender snails tucked deep in ceramic divots beneath vibrant green pools of garlicky parsley butter. Pass the crusty baguettes, please, and don't dare take my plates away until the last drop of juice is gone!
On closer consideration, not all of the classic dishes here are quite yet up to the level of those downtown stars (not to mention Georges Perrier's Le Bar Lyonnais). I also wouldn't mind if the entrees were just a few dollars less expensive. But they're generally good enough to merit solid consideration for a meal in the neighborhood, even if I can't help describing my meals here with a peculiar Parisian expression that begins with a shrug and raise of the eyebrows, puffs the cheeks with air, then bursts through the lips as half-wind, half-words: "Bof! Pas mal. . . . "
