It was your typical crowd considering the circumstances: 6 p.m. on a Monday in a restaurant that teetered on the edge of Rittenhouse Square, Rouge was about to be flooded with a classy, well-dressed crowd of Center City's clearly sophisticated, pseudo-European crowd. There were cocktails and outdoor seating. I would call them yuppies if the word yuppy still existed in our collective vocabularies - the best description is this was a crowd of 20- 30-something year olds gripping onto their last few glorious years before la vie suburbia comes a-calling.
It was hopelessly French and trying a bit too hard for that 'ouhh la la' Euro feel, but the patrons seemed to believe that this petit bistro was the real thing. Rouge is best known for its burger, recently named the best cheeseburger in America by GQ magazine. I ordered a famous Rouge hamburger - a fitting menu item for a French-Asian Bistro - and was served by a cheeky young server sporting a petit black dress. The meal took the French design, on a white plate with the fries that are named to honor the country's devotion to fine cuisine. The portions: definitely American. The burger was a beast in itself. Of monstrous proportions, it was medium well and cooked accordingly. The atmosphere, however, was delicious and what made spending more than McDonald's would even fathom to be appropriate on a burger worth the extra money.
The food itself was not anything much more refined than anything that my neighbor's barbecue pit could not grill, but the people watching in Rittenhouse created the feel of the small cafe hidden somewhere in a side street in Paris. The people watching is amazing, and the bar is rated as one of the best in the district, and this effete crowd sipped down their spirits after work.
Rouge is famed for its social scene, beautiful views of the square and its trendy French fusion-ed food, and if that sort of atmosphere floats your boat, well, Rouge seems like the ideal place to start an early evening at the bar, especially with its recent addition to the menu of a gourmet hot dog. But if your boat can be floated by other, more price-appropriate food items, like, say a quick grab from one of the many food trucks that encroach on the square, and your ability to find a grassy spot inside to people watch, then you may want to save yourself a little bit of money and enjoy Rittenhouse in a more budget-friendly, yet equally enjoyable way.
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