Chez Nous Reinvents Itself As Café Triskele With A Menu Of Shared Plates
The fixture on Main Street in Lee, Mass. is figuring to stay that way under its new identity, Cafe Triskele.
The COVID pandemic has changed all of us, and it changed Chez Nous Bistro, too. A fixture on Main Street in Lee since 2005, Chez Nous had become a beloved Berkshires institution. Its loyal clientele enjoyed having a French-tinged dining experience in familiar and unpretentious surroundings, which also just so happened to be a convenient pre-theater option before heading to Jacob’s Pillow or Shakespeare & Company.
For Chez Nous chef-owners Franck Tessier and Rachel Portnoy, having to halt indoor dining last year because of the pandemic was a time for reflection — and reinvention. The couple reconceived their restaurant as Cafe Triskele, a more casual dining experience with a focus on small-ish and medium size plates meant for sharing. The new format is apparently a crowd-pleaser: At 7 o’clock on a recent, damp Tuesday night, nearly every table was full on the two canopied outdoor patios and in the restaurant’s cozy dining rooms.
Cafe Triskele offers a menu of temptations. Everything sounded good to our group of four, and we conducted intense negotiations before settling on four dishes to share as appetizers and four more to share as our collective main course. There was no doubt that we’d order the chicken liver pâté ($13) because Chez Nous had always excelled at charcuterie. Served on a wooden board with cornichons, chutney, grainy mustard, and Berkshire Mountain Bakery bread, the earthy yet refined pâté was le bon choix. Our table was overflowing when the other three appetizers arrived. The luscious smoked bluefish mousse ($13), accompanied by slices of baguette, was tasty and addictive. The grilled vegetable ravioli ($16.50) were five oversized pillows of pasta filled with the essence of early summer and topped with baby spinach and shards of Parmesan. And though the quinoa salad ($14) was studded with cranberries, Marcona almonds, and chunks of feta dressed in a sherry vinaigrette, it would have had more zing with a shower of fresh herbs.
When the second round of food arrived, we instantly devoured the tender baby New Zealand lamb chops (four for $19.50) that came with fragrant, crunchy piquillo pepper-polenta “fries.” These delectable “fries” should be added to the menu as their own dish ASAP. The Black Angus steak salad ($18) featured four thick slices of medium rare beef with a wonderfully crunchy and tangy beet-and-red cabbage slaw. A small but lovely filet of Arctic Char ($18) was festooned with arugula and a salsa of corn, mango, grapefruit, and onion.
It was gratifying to see the restaurant humming with activity — and a joy to overhear strangers at adjacent tables gossiping about shows they’d recently seen at Barrington Stage Company and Berkshire Theatre Group. But it was disheartening that Cafe Trieskele is having the same staffing woes facing restaurants across the United States. There were several hiccups in the service on our visit. Although Cafe Trieskele is meant to be more “casual” than Chez Nous, the owners should hire more bussers before things get too casual and consider holding a boot camp for their well-meaning servers.
Now that the restaurant is named after the ancient Celtic symbol of three spirals or limbs that represent motion, rebirth and the cyclicality of nature, one has high hopes that Cafe Triskele will harness all the energy of summer in the Berkshires to find its groove as a year-round restaurant as reliable and lovable as the old Chez Nous.
