c/o Isabel Kapner

Dining is an experience that should celebrate delicious flavors while promoting human connection. Arugula Bistro’s mission to bring “friends and family together over glorious food, easy-drinking wines, a comfortable dining experience, and a lot of love” attempts to do just that. The dim lighting, jazz music, nine-seat bar, and gold-washed walls littered with pictures in this West Hartford restaurant immediately make the diner feel at ease. Over its 27 years in business, Arugula Bistro has cultivated an intimate dining experience through minimizing expansion. Christiane Gehami and Michael Kask opened Arugula Bistro, originally an eight-seat restaurant, intending to serve fusion cuisine with a focus on traditional Middle Eastern dishes, as well as plates inspired by Indian and Asian flavors. 

The menu has 13 mezze, 4 salads, 5 entrées, and 11 flatbreads. This menu tries to straddle the worlds of fine dining and casual eateries, ultimately to a fault. Onion rings ($7) and escargot ($16) are both offered as mezze. They also offer a cup-and-char pepperoni flatbread ($22), essentially just a pepperoni pizza with hot honey, and a wild mushroom flatbread ($20) with this elaborate description: “Onion Marmalade/Asiago Base… duxelles, mushrooms, blue cheese, finished with arugula that has been dressed in a truffle vinaigrette.” I understand that the intention is to make the menu more accessible to those who may be pickier eaters. Still, there is strength in cohesion, and increased cohesion would undoubtedly make the Arugula Bistro menu stronger. I also think that the addition of truffle vinaigrette and escargot was to the detriment of the overall menu. Their website states, “our dining room is your dining room,” but adding stereotypically fancier items to the menu detracts from the restaurant’s purpose and its strength. The dishes unique to Arugula Bistro were fantastic; this restaurant should focus on celebrating its delicious flavors instead of incorporating less impressive, more standard menu items.

Since the stark contrasts in flavor profiles made it difficult to pick items that fit well together, my friend and I decided to share three entirely unrelated dishes: the warm roasted eggplant and wonton napoleon ($16), the fried brussels sprouts ($11), and the duck confit and chorizo sausage flatbread ($25). The first dish aligned most with what I was expecting from a Mediterranean restaurant, the fried brussels sprouts were picked as a traditional bistro dish, and the flatbread was recommended by the waiter. 

c/o Isabel Kapner

I cannot stop thinking about the eggplant dish. It had everything I could ever ask for from an appetizer. It truly felt like eating a warm embrace. Roasted eggplant and tomatoes were lightly bathed in a curry vinaigrette and stacked with watercress, pickled red onions, and fried wontons sprinkled with feta on top of a bed of hummus. The warmth from the curry vinaigrette paired perfectly with the soft eggplant and tomatoes. By roasting the thick tomato slices, you could really taste their sweetness and depth coming through. Every bite delivered a wonderful synthesis of flavoring, none overpowering the other, collaborating to provide comfort. The red onion and fried wonton brought a crunch to this otherwise very soft appetizer, adding another sense of dimension. There was even a slight kick from the curry vinaigrette that balanced out the subtler hummus. The dim lights and jazz music in Arugula Bistro acted as good accompaniments to the warmth I found in this appetizer. I would highly recommend this dish, and I will be attempting my own version of it soon. 10/10. 

The fried brussels sprouts left more to be desired. Because this is such a popular dish for restaurants like this to have on their menu, I had relatively high expectations. I was hoping that Arugula Bistro would produce a replication of the classic dish: fried sprouts coated in a cheesy, garlicky sauce, with crisp exterior leaves and a soft interior in each sprout. Alternatively, I hoped that they would add some sort of new excitement to the dish, maybe in the form of some unexpected spice or star ingredient. These brussels sprouts had the cheesy, garlicky goodness I expected, but they were suffocated in oily aioli. Though they appeared crisp, they had gone soggy by the time they reached our table. There was no edge to this dish. These brussels sprouts lacked dimension in texture. I love garlicky brussels sprouts as a main dish accompaniment, but this did not hold up to my standards. 4/10.

c/o Isabel Kapner

Our entrée consisted of duck confit generously piled on top of a crumbled chorizo, mushroom, and mozzarella flatbread with a handful of truffle-vinaigrette-dressed lettuce sprinkled on top. It was delicious. The duck was incredibly tender, cooked in a way that allowed the flavoring to really come out. The smokiness from the mozzarella and the chorizo combined well with the sweetness of the onion marmalade base. Though I appreciate the addition of the fresh lettuce to add texture, I am always suspicious of restaurants incorporating truffles into their dishes. It’s almost always not enough to have any impact and is only done as a cop-out—a cheapened elevation. As expected, I could not taste the truffle vinaigrette on the lettuce, but I did enjoy the lightly dressed lettuce as an addition to this smoky, sweet, tender flatbread. To add even more dimension to this dish and bring out its flavors further, I would have incorporated some sort of spice, but the flatbread was still delicious without it. 9/10.

Arugula Bistro provided a wonderful environment for dinner: intimate and cozy. Admittedly, I have high expectations for every restaurant I choose to go out to eat at. As a college student, my budget for eating anywhere that doesn’t take Wesleyan dining points is minimal, and I want to spend my money on really good food—food that provides a wonderful combination of flavors and textures, that brings out the best in each ingredient. Arugula Bistro succeeded in delivering great flavor profiles in its innovative dishes and should continue to base its menu around its strengths, instead of overcomplicating things for the sake of trend. 

Isabel Kapner can be reached at ikapner@wesleyan.edu.