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Saint Emilion
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Saint Emilion
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Saint Emilion
From the second you walk into Saint-Emilion, you’ll know you’re not in for a typical night out. Make your way into the vine-covered restaurant that looks like a Tudor home, and you’ll be warmly greeted by a parade of hosts: One person will lead you to your seat, maybe on the patio, maybe in the snug dining room. Another will focus solely on your drinks, speaking wildly and vividly of the restaurant’s extensive list of reds, wines and champagnes. Your food server will follow, guiding you through the menu of classic French cuisine with the type of patience and precision that seems nearly a lost art. Eventually, owner Bernard Tronche will come by and make small talk, even if he doesn’t know you — especially if he doesn’t know you.
No other restaurant in Fort Worth is quite like it — except, of course, Tronche’s other French restaurant, Paris 7th, located three blocks to the east. Not three miles. Not three counties. Three blocks.
Saint-Emilion and Paris 7th are not mirror reflections of one another, though. Paris is more upscale, more dressy, more expensive. St. E. is blue jeans and a button-down; Paris is slacks and cuff links.
But they do share a common trait that goes beyond cuisine: The two restaurants are a world away from what’s happening in Fort Worth’s dining scene, and that’s part of their intrigue. Against a backdrop of shifting trends and tastes, along with development in just about every pocket of Fort Worth that will birth new restaurants, so many new restaurants, this pair of low-key, fine-dining French spots, steps from one another, continue to thrive.
“That’s how we do well; we’re not like any other restaurant,” says Tronche, tucked into a seat at Paris 7th, a few hours before dinner service begins. “I pay attention to other restaurants, to new restaurants, but they don’t affect what I do. Whatever is popular at the moment may not be popular in a few months, a few years from now. Those restaurants are the ones that may not last.”
Located in the museum district, on a stretch of Seventh Street that reaches into the Monticello neighborhood, Saint-Emilion has lasted more than three decades. Opened in 1985 by Tronche and his wife, Karin Kelly, a former news reporter and anchor at WFAA, St. E is something of a bastillion for classic French food — for mussels in a Gewürztraminer broth; for gnocchi à la Parisienne, nicked with a Scarface of a sear; for snails and pâtés and perfectly cooked beef filets and frites so good, you’ll never eat plain ol’ french fries again.
The restaurant closed briefly last year, as Tronche wanted to make improvements, inside and out, and also focus on his new find: the nearby space occupied by Le Cep, the only other French restaurant in town. When Le Cep went under, Tronche jumped on the digs, eager to put into place a brave expansion idea: Loosen up at Saint-Emilion and turn the new space into a classy affair.
With chef Kobe Perdue at the helm of the kitchen, Paris 7th opened last summer. Le Cep’s somewhat anemic dining room had been brightened with color and light. Servers delivered cheese trays and caviar and explained to diners the prix fixe menu. And those accustomed to eating at Saint-Emilion were greeted with something they weren’t necessarily used to: a spacious dining room; move a couple inches at Saint-Emilion, and you’ll fall into someone else’s snails.
A few months later, St. E reopened, with a new vibe.
“Saint-Emilion needed a refresh,” Kelly says. “More than 30 years — it was time. We took some of the things that people loved about Saint-Emilion and incorporated them into Paris 7th. That allowed us to get Saint-Emilion back to what it was originally, a casual, country French bistro.”
When it opened three decades ago, St. E was just as much an anomaly as it is today. Few restaurants dared to tackle French food for an obvious reason: There were not a lot of French chefs in Fort Worth.
Tronche hails from the southwest area of France. He spent most of his youth in Bordeaux, where his appreciation of food and wine began to simmer. As he grew older, he grew restless to travel, penning a bucket list of countries he wanted to visit.
“You should have seen this list,” he says. “Name after name, country after country. I was young; I wanted to go everywhere, see everything.”
At 21, and with two pals in tow, he took off for the rest of the world, hitting up the U.S. first. Not long after arriving, the three bought a 1970 Oldsmobile Toronado and journeyed from one part of the country to the other, from New Jersey to New Orleans.
“It was in New Orleans that I decided to not go back,” he says. “My friends went back, but I stayed. I was broke, completely broke, but I had a good feeling that I could make a living here — doing what I hadn’t quite figured out yet.”
While making ends meet as a construction worker, Tronche received a call from his mother — who still lived in France — and suggested he call a friend who worked at an upscale French restaurant in Dallas, called Calluaud’s. Located on McKinney Avenue, the restaurant was happy to have him. “There aren’t a lot of waiters in Dallas who speak French,” he says.
Walking to McKinney Avenue every day from his downtown hotel, he waited tables but kept a close eye on the kitchen, studying the cooking techniques of the chef, Guy Calluaud. “I learned so much from him,” Tronche says. “Not just cooking techniques, but learning how to run a restaurant, to lead a staff. Cooking techniques, yes, but also how to run a fine-dining European restaurant.”
Soon after he began working at Calluaud’s, he met Kelly. “He was making $20 a day and staying in this fleabag of a hotel,” she laughs. “I rescued him from that.”
The two met in Dallas through a mutual friend. “I came into the picture in 1981,” she says. “I’d been living and working in Dallas, but I moved to Miami. I came back here to visit a friend of mine who had married a French guy. She kept saying, ‘I want you to meet his friend.’ Every time I talked to her, she was trying to get me to go out with this guy. I was her house guest. What choice did I have?
“The night I met him, he was wearing a red silk shirt and leather pants,” she says. “I didn’t know about that. I didn’t know too many guys who wore leather pants. But boy, could he chop parsley.”
They soon married. Kelly moved back to Dallas, focusing on her journalism career while Tronche immersed himself in Dallas’ restaurant scene, moving from working in dining rooms and kitchens to managing them. Inevitably, he got the itch to open his own spot.
Says Kelly: “Our best friends told us, ‘Forget Dallas. There’s already enough going on there. Go to Fort Worth. They need more restaurants.’”
Saint-Emilion opened in 1985 and quickly became one of the city’s top restaurants. Three decades later, it remains the city’s go-to for authentic French food. It and Paris 7th, of course.
“It’s a crazy idea, I know,” says Kelly. “But it works, and it works beautifully. You can go to two French restaurants, right down the street from one another, and have two completely different dining experiences. Where else can you do that? Heck, you’d have to go to France.”
