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Washington Post

"Since Chez Francois has been unceasingly popular for 46 years -- half of them downtown, before it moved to the country -- it's reasonable to assume it will continue well into the next century...Thus this country inn, with its heavy French accent, always keeps up but never changes. It's a restaurant of warmth, of abundance, of tradition.
The meal starts with garlic toast and herbed cottage cheese, plus a small hors d'oeuvre, perhaps a nostalgic slice of quiche. Then comes the five-course fixed-price dinner. The Haeringer family's Alsatian roots show up in choucroutes, in mousse-topped salmon or trout, and on the wine list. The rest of France contributes scallops and shrimp drenched in garlic butter, sweetbreads and foie gras in a puff pastry shell, duck and rabbit and chateaubriand. Sometimes simplest is best, as in an appetizer of local ham topped with asparagus and Parmesan. Desserts are displayed at the entrance, glistening bavarians, Alsatian plum tart and kugelhopf.
But for all the vast choices and elaborate preparations, food is not the star. The service, the folksy dining rooms, the terrace with its masses of flowers are restorative. Where else can you sip champagne with raspberries, dine on a rack of lamb for two fully garnished, and watch deer leap across the horizon in the waning sun? "
Phyllis C. Richman 10/17/99

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Washingtonian Magazine *** Very Best

"Sunday afternoons at L'Auberge are like a scene out of a Louis Malle film. Large tables of friends and family in sunlit dining rooms drinking wine and dining on soulful Alsatian cooking. Sweetbreads with foie gras. Rabbit with wintry red cabbage and chestnuts. The restaurant's signature choucroute, an eye-catching lineup of pheasant, duck confit, and foie gras, far grander than the typical pork-and-sauerkraut combo. And a sensational starter of smoked-fish choucroute.
In a world of avant-garde eateries, this many-chambered farmhouse on a country road really feels French. As always, dinner--be it in the afternoon or evening--is a fixed-price, five-course affair, the cost determined by the entrée. Over the years, the menu has been tweaked here and there. Salmon en croûte for two has become red snapper for one and is even better than the original--snapper is a better foil to the rich crab, lobster, and puff pastry.
Puff pastry also figures in such sublime starters as the onion tart. And even though soufflés are the most popular dessert, it's the tarts--plum and apple--that capture the heart."
January 2000

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Zagat's Reviews ***

"There is no more enjoyable place for a celebration than this rustic French farmhouse in Great Falls, our DC surveyors' perennial favorite restaurant; lovingly managed by the Haeringer family in the European manner, its hearty Alsatian food is plentiful, delicious and gives full value; the unique setting down a winding country road is less formal than you'd expect, with an utterly "magical" garden. "
2000

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Appetizer

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Chef Jacques

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