Bar Dumaine Serves Textbook French Cuisine in Centerville

Anne Kearney’s reinvention of Rue Dumaine is a casual study in classics.
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Editorial note: This restaurant will close on July 2.

Nothing incites home improvement mojo quite like a peek into someone else’s digs, and we got an eyeful on our recent trip to Anne Kearney’s Bar Dumaine. The fetching make-under of her upscale Rue Dumaine, a Centerville institution since 2007, involves chic battleship gray walls, Dixieland jazz, and enough French bistro standards to make ordering frustrating.

Grilled hanger steak with Montpelier butter and pan seared scallops with blood orange beurre noisette

Photograph by Marlene Rounds


Take Kearney’s flawless endive with apple and gorgonzola, and her peel-and-eat jumbo shrimp, served not with the standard cocktail sauce but a bewitching remoulade, heavy on dill and English mustard. Both dishes remind us why the James Beard Foundation has fallen all over Kearney. She won Best Chef Southwest (while in New Orleans) in 2002 and has garnered six nominations since. But her perfectly poached boudin blanc with caramelized onions and roasted apples, and the soft and creamy scrambled eggs with foie gras, incited real envy. Why am I not cooking eggs with foie at home? Can I order decent boudin blanc on Amazon? (Actually, yes.) Kearney’s current lease runs out in late July; her plans for the future remain unclear, which is why you need to go now. We’ll be back—to try the marrow bones. In the meantime, I’ll be at Ace Hardware sorting through gray paint chips for my kitchen.


Bar Dumaine, 1061 Miamisburg-Centerville Rd., Centerville, (937) 610-1061, bardumaine.com. Lunch and dinner seven days.

 

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