Five stars, grudgingly given

I approach every restaurant with an open heart and mind, but I surrender my top rating grudgingly. Thus, as Restaurant L&E in Chester seemed early in the review process to be cruising toward five stars, I put it through a couple of additional tests. An outside viewer might mistake that for some sort of favoritism, but I assure you, and a restaurateur would confirm, that it was actually a couple of extra opportunities for something — anything — to go wrong. Restaurant L&E passed every test admirably, establishing itself as one of Connecticut's truly elite restaurants.

It wasn't just L&E's handsome antique-lined quarters, friendly, knowledgeable servers and creative food that won me over. Or even its caring owners, Linda and Everett Reid, who manage the front and back of the house, respectively, and who previously operated American Seasons Restaurant and Moona Bistro on Nantucket. Also impressive was how well L&E markets itself in a town that, while one of Connecticut's prettiest, is far removed from population centers, and how many paths to gustatory bliss it has created for food lovers of differing budgets.

Regular menu prices are what you would expect of an elite restaurant, with starters ranging from $12 to $16 and entrées from $28 to $36. But there's plenty of value at other price points as well. On Saturdays, upstairs at L&E, a separate door at the right front of the building leads to leisurely French farmhouse wine dinners for $75. Wednesday and Thursday, the downstairs bistro offered a three-course prix fixe for $25, and it did not retreat into safe cooking.

Tuesday is gourmet burger night, $14.50, with a glass of house beer or wine and crispy hand-cut fries. Caldwell and his daughter drank Estrella and ate chuck ground at Meadow Meat Company in Middletown — hers with bacon marmalade and blue cheese fondue, his with roasted portobello and onion confit and Cato Corner Vivace. The ketchup, which you won't need, is house made.

On a full bistro night he drank a 2011 Domaine de Guillaman from the Côtes de Gascogne, played with oysters and a smoked tomato cocktail sauce, split a charcuterie plate, and worked through sweetbreads, an oyster stew, and a duo of yellowfin and Copper River salmon tartare. Entrées included skate in Meyer lemon brown butter, hanger steak with duck-fat fries, and a duck duo. Desserts ran to clafoutis, honey crème caramel, and red apricot butter cake. The house ice creams, he wrote, are unforgettable on their own.

En fin, we have experienced a tour de force that only a handful of Connecticut chefs could match. Cinq étoiles? Bien sûr.