(Jonathan Pluvinet knows his pastries)

The headline above may not be entirely accurate. Rosallie Le French Café is far from a perfect restaurant.

To begin with, there is the signage. The script of which is practically unreadable.*

The other problem is that it’s 13 miles from my house. So there’s that too.

Then there’s the matter of it being in a lousy strip mall. But then again, isn’t everything in our humble burg?

And don’t even get us started on the slight wobble to our table, and the fact that we were FORCED (FORCED I tell you!) to wait 2-3 interminable minutes before the food was delivered to our table.

So, you can see, there are LOTS of imperfections to Rosallie.

None of which have anything to do with the food, which is as close to the Champs-Elysee excellence as you’re going to find 5,421 miles from Gay** Paree.

How good is it? Well, we at ELV feel pretty confident in saying it’s the best French pastries off the Strip, by a country mile, and equally sure that nothing outside of Bouchon or Bardot Brasserie can touch it on Las Vegas Boulevard.

Yeah, it’s that good. Whether your weakness be madeleines, macaroons, palmiers, or all manners of pastries, this place is da bomb. The ne plus ultra of patisseries in these here parts.

Need details? Well, here they are:

Pluvinet’s almond croissant has garnered a lot of praise among the social media mavens:

…but it’s his regular croissant that shows the fine hand of a baker who has these recipes in his veins. The best croissant, the croissant you find all over Paris every morning there, develop a tender shellac of crisp, browned pastry that shatters into hundreds of shards — little butter-laden grenades of goodness — that should stain the table (or your clothes!) upon being broken through. Pluvinet’s do just that, revealing a thousand layers of moist mille feuille beneath the crust. There’s no denying the excellence of his other pastries, but the test of a master is making a simple croissant like this one:

…and making it sing.

And sing it does, and do his quiches:

…and his tartes and his sandwiches (try the duck confit made with French ducks cooked on-premises) and his breads and his coffee and basically every damn thing he’s putting out in this superlative little place.

That quiche Lorraine (above) is at once eggy, rich and gossamer light — no mean feat that — and the best rendition we’ve had in Las Vegas. We tried another version with spinach and goat cheese and it was every bit the first one’s equal.

Not for nothing did Jeff Maher and I start chowing down on Pluvinet’s palatable panoply of preeminent pastries right in the middle of our Wake Up With the CW food segment two weeks ago:

This place is the real deal, folks. But it’s not perfect. No siree.

To be perfect it would have to be a lot closer to my house.

ROSALLIE LE FRENCH CAFÉ

6090 South Rainbow Blvd.

Las Vegas, NV 89118

702.998.4121

http://rosallie.com/

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** as in frolicsome and full of mirth