Hanna Raskin's Butter-Soaked Takedown of Luc

Three reviews in and the gloves are off for Hanna Raskin, who warns that "something's seriously amiss at Luc, where it took me three visits to compile a list of two dishes I'd willingly order again." That list, by the way, seems to consist of the soup du jour and a green salad:

I try valiantly to find more dishes worthy of another go. I work my way through slimy, limp, pickled mackerel, sodden with acid, and a fleshy chicken-liver mousse trapped beneath a thick stratum of rhubarb gelatin. As a cowboy gourmet might say, the appetizer is all mousse and no liver. The chicken's contribution is lost in a fog of butter and cream.

Thierry Rautureau's Madison Valley bistro is reliably packed and the kitchen is "woefully small," leading Raskin to wonder whether "a squeezed kitchen can drive a cook mad." The intricately manufactured pommes souffles "turn out to be a potato prank of a starter," a chocolate-caramel cake is "as dehydrated as a breakfast fiber bar," and the beef in the burger "tastes lean and cheap." She concludes, "It's hard to shake the feeling at Luc that the restaurant is intended to make money," namely helping keep neighboring Rover's afloat. [Seattle Weekly]

It's a light week for formal reviews, but once again Seattle Met has rounded up all the recent reviews of Scott Staples' Uneeda Burger in Fremont. [Seattle Met]