Bistro Elan

Service is outstanding– each server is knowledgeable on the menu and can offer great recommendations. The owner is usually there and really friendly too! The food is excellent. I have come for dinner on a Friday night and feasted, had several courses and each one better than the next. Visually appealing, flavorful, and food coma inducing. What more could you want?!

We just discovered this little gem off the beaten path in Palo Alto. Most of the hub bub is over on University Avenue. This clearly is a bistro enjoyed by the locals. Seating for only 19 Bistro Élan was special from the attentive service provided by Camron and Edgar. They were not bashful about making recommendations. The Flatiron Steak was perfect for my wife following a carefully created garden salad. I began with a traditional Cedar Salad that was created with Anchovie paste. My entrée was the sea scallops that melted in your mouth. Perfectly toasted on the outside and moist on the inside. Yum. For dessert the ginger chocolate cake was terrific. A little gem that we will be returning to.

Service is second to none. Food is excellent — I can vouch for the delicious Duck on the menu. Great ambience… but don’t expect to have privacy for your conversation. It’s tight quarters and your neighbors will hear part of your conversation. I’d come here to eat delicious food and have great service and overall enjoy a great, memorable experience!

I’m so glad we found this place! The food is fresh and delicious! It is a small cute place with passionate employees. We can’t wait to go back!

Bistro Élan feels like a place that used to be excellent. The presentation is a little off, the food not quite cooked perfectly, and the staff a tad crass. Still good, but not a place to go on a fancy date.

After enjoying the original Bistro Élan on California Avenue for many years this was a big disappointment. The service was good but the food (Duck Confit, Sole, Chocolate cake) is nowhere near what we used to enjoy so much. The place is small, no tablecloth, no Amex accepted. The only thing that did not seem to change is the high price.

Tiny place. Cold cucumber soup out of this world good. Amazing chef. This is a place for foodies.

Absolutely loved our entire dining experience here! We were reading the menu from the window and the chef came out personally to greet us and was extremely helpful and welcoming. To be honest, after the wonderful greeting there was nothing that the kitchen could do wrong.
And the food was spectacular! We had the «little gem» salad which was very tasty and light. We also ordered the king salmon and sea scallops which were perfect.
Definitely coming back. Very nice place for a date.

Spectacular. Subtle flavors matched with exquisite wine and service that makes you feel like you’re eating at a friend’s house. Tonight it was fresh Massachusetts sea scallops. The last time it was the duck comfit. Everything they do makes me want to return, and I’m never disappointed. Thank you Ambjorn and Andrea!

Overall, the food was nothing impressive.
Though they pride themselves on locally sourced ingredients (which is commendable) the food was nothing amazing.
We tried the scallops and sole, and it quite honestly was rich but tasteless.
The two star rating is a reflection of the price– in terms of value for money this restaurant is overpriced.
Disclaimer: I know nothing about wine or their selection/​pairing. If you’re the type that claims to know the difference between one red and and next then this place might be worth a shot.

Bistro Élan is a very small restaurant that could easily missed if you were not looking for it. What a great little gem, great food and service. I would recommend reservations based on it’s size. Food ingredients are locally sourced. I would easily recommend this restaurant to anyone.

Ambjorn is one of the most talented chefs I have ever met. The food he prepares is worthy of a few Michelin stars. His partner Andrea manages the front of the house with graceful calm. We especially enjoy Ambjorn’s preparation of fish with mustard sauce and mashed potatoes, his pommels frites are TDF and if you can get him to make the smoked salmon, wasabi and tomato versus stack foodie heaven awaits! Ambjorn and Adrea, please come cook in AZ!

I wanted to give Bistro Élan another chance. So my wife and I went there again tonight. I really want to like this place as the waiters are nice and friendly and the ingredients are all excellent quality. However, I can’t recommend it simply but the food itself is inconsistent.
So this time we had the house salad, a cast iron flatiron steak with asparagus and bearnaise sauce on the side, and spaghetti carbonara with asparagus, egg parmesan and pecorino cheese.
The bread was still cold and slightly stale. At least this time I think it might have been good… 24 hours ago as it «looked» good (until you touched it)
The salad was decent with good fresh greens (I liked the inclusion of dill, which adds a zing to it).
So this time the steak was excellent (was a different preparation than the last time) — cooked perfectly with an excellent fond from the searing so it was juicy and flavorful. The fries were still a little soggy for my taste (nearby Pastis has excellent fries), but this time it was at least hot (not cold or just lukewarm). The asparagus it came with was also excellently cooked.
I was excited about the spaghetti carbonara because it was made the authentic style with egg, cheese and guanciale (basically unsmoke bacon)… no cream sauce as that is an American variation (the egg and cheese… when done correctly are plenty creamy). Unfortunately was not as good as the steak. To be fair, it might be just because it was not quite the way I expected/​prefer it. For one thing it was a bit watery (I think from the asparagus bits included in it) and didn’t particularly have the bacon-​flavor from the guanciale. There were plenty of bacon bit of in the pasta, but it was a jarring juxtaposition to go from lightly flavored spaghetti with cheese and asparagus and then crunch into one of the very salt rich bit of bacon… not in a good way. Again, the dish wasn’t bad… it just felt like the flavors didn’t come together. For a great dish of spaghetti carbonara… go to Pizzeria Napoletana in nearby Mountain View.
So out of 4 dishes… having one excellent dish, and three so-​so dishes and bad bread — I can’t really recommend this to anyone as it is too much of a crapshoot in my opinion.
Again, this relatively quiet night as half the tables were empty and I saw the head chef was chatting with some diners — so it wasn’t like the place was overworked.

We had a wonderful evening and dinner here with friends. Everything tasted amazing, the service was fantastic, and we walked out full and happy. They were able to accommodate my vegan friend.

I’ve only been here for private events with set menus (where I also wasn’t paying the bill) so far, but each time, it has been excellent — and I’d expect the food to be the same during normal operations.
French/​Californian cuisine; the simplest things (fries, steak, salads) are done the best. All the ingredients were fresh, and many were local. Service and presentation were, as expected at a French-​inspired restaurant, excellent, as were the wine selections. Really nothing to find fault with, except that the restaurant itself is quite small — I can imagine a long wait for lunch or dinner, or a rush to turn tables. I wish Bistro Élan would again move to a larger location like it had before.

Went to Bistro Élan on Birch St. for dinner and had a brilliant pseudo-​French cuisine experience. Excellent service from a knowledgeable and interested staff, good menu selection, and the dishes were, simply put, stellar.
The dessert menu I thought was particularly good as a non-​dessert eater myself — they offered non-​stereotypical selections as well as 3 – 4 choice dessert wines.
One thing to know is that this place is small, like a French bistro — I’m not sure you could seat more than 6 people together without shuffling tables. It feels authentic throughout, though the owner appears to be Norwegian :)
I can’t speak highly enough of my experience here, and we took quite a long time to go from appetizers through desert. Never rushed, just encouraged to enjoy.

I enjoyed this place a lot, the funky setting was great and the meal was awesome.
I would have given them 5 stars but the vegetarian options were none existant which will prevent me from coming back with my wife

The low reviews for this restaurant is completely unjustified! The food was delicious and service was even though a little slow, was quite friendly. We got to the restaurant about 7pm and was seated immediately, it’s a very small space and about half filled when we arrived (although it filled up pretty quickly), couple outdoor tables with heating lamps, very nice ambiance.
Greeted with menus, bread, and complementary amuse bouche of cured salmon on chips. We shared a fresh dungeness crab salad to start, that came out really fast. I was kind of expecting the salad to come with lettuce, but it didn’t, even better no fillers! Thin sliced avocados, gravenstein apples, crab, crushed toasted pistachios. The vinegar dressing on the apples had a very sharp bite, it was a great compliment to the creamy of the avocados and softness of the crab. The portion is pretty small, I can definitely eat that all by myself.
For the entrée, I got the Sonoma duck leg confit with pea and cherry tomato risotto, and my friend got the pain seared sea scallops with corn pancake and cherry tomatoes with roasted corn. Both were excellent! I liked both of the starches better than the protein. My risotto was super decadent, creamy but not too rich, great flavor with just enough acid from the tomatoes. The pancake had a thin caramelized crunch on the outside, and the inside was melt-​in-​your-​mouth soft! I was expecting a denser pancake texture, that was such a pleasant surprise! The duck and scallops were seasoned and cooked perfectly too. The only that wasn’t good was the hard-​as-​a-​rock bread.
For such a tiny place, I can imagine lunch time being a bit overwhelming. Good food takes time to prepare, and you want to take the time to enjoy it, so I would recommend coming here for a leisurely dinner when you are not in a rush to get somewhere.

I love Bistro Élan (On California Ave) so I was excited to try their new lunch location with 2 friends. Don’t bother — their only interest (as hostess said directly to me) is in «turning tables» at lunch. Hey, if I wanted a «drive thru» experience I’d go to In-​n-​Out.
12noon, there were 2 empty tables and they refused to seat us because the 3^rd person in our party was not there yet. [note: They dont take reservations either] We honestly explained we’d order starters and wine (if they had it) — but the hostess whined that they wouldn’t be able to «turn the table» again after us. Classy.

Great food. Just don’t be the last to be seated for lunch. One hour for entrée to arrive. There was obvious confusion about what happened to our order. Sometimes, waiters and cooks are in a no-​win situation. We lost.