Au revoir, Chateau France
October 16th, 2007 by Brian Ries in Gossip, Openings/Closings, Restaurants
Painters are busy covering the atrocious pink facade at Soho’s Chateau France outpost; the number for the N. Dale Mabry location is disconnected; both locations have vanished from Chateau France’s website. Looks like impressario Antoine Louro is in complete retreat to his base in St. Pete.
According to former Chateau France (SoHo) chef Tony Savage, the partnership between Louro and the owners of the SoHo property (Barry Smith and MaryAnn Stiles) was dissolved last week. There won’t be much interruption of service, though, since the spot will immediately re-open as Chateau SoHo, with Savage as executive chef and a more appetizing exterior.
“I was in New Orleans for 23 years before Katrina,” says Savage, who will be sliding some French-inspired Creole and Cajun favorites onto the menu, along with more medium- and lower-priced French dishes to temper the previously ultra-expensive fare.
A call to Louro’s Chateau France St. Pete to confirm returned this helpful advice - “I can’t help you. Goodbye.” That may be because of this. Or this. Or this.
UPDATE: I just received a return call from the ever-gregarious Antoine Louro. He confirmed that the North Tampa location was closed — he sold it about six weeks ago — and that his partnership with Smith and Stiles was over. “Partnership doesn’t work if you’re not in the business,” he said, explaining that Stiles’ is a lawyer and doesn’t understand restaurants.
After the aborted expansion of the past two years, he has no plans on opening any more outposts. “Every person wants to open a Chateau France,” he said, “but I’m done with it. I’m happy here in my house in St. Pete.”
November 26th, 2007 at 7:29 pm
Just wanted to say that I tried Chateau Soho last night and the food is great. The wine list was also very good and the mark up on the wine wasn’t too bad. We were very impressed with this new restaurant and definitely want it to stay in the neighborhood. Everybody looking for good food and a nice atmosphere should try Chateau Soho!
January 21st, 2008 at 12:01 am
1/20/08 Four of us ate at Chateau Soho on a Sunday night — we were the only people in the place at 7:30 pm. Food was overpriced and underquality and service was unprofessional at best. They never offered bread, (flavored butter was hard as a rock) they never brought 2 of the 4 salads until they were reminded. They raved about the salad dressing which was homemade - but it was tasteless. They also talked up the potatoes which were completely devoid of all flavor and not cooked all the way through. The “fresh” fish of the day was tilapia and flounder almondine, which arrived with almonds looking like burnt breadcrumbs. We ordered 3 desserts and they had to be the worst on record. First they told us that the “framboise” on the menu was a raspberry creme brulee. Then they told us it was a creme anglaise with raspberries. It arrived with nary a raspberry in sight. It had strawberries on it and tasted like nothing. The bananas foster was black and the chocolate souflle was a disaster. I would not recommend spending any money here.