The great Midtown shrines to French cuisine were mourned one by one as they went, often at length and in print. At the same time, another style of French restaurant was dying off, but generally without benefit of a full obituary. This was the small, discreet bistro with forehead-height curtains in the windows, Piaf on the speakers, snails on the menu, chips on the china. They could be found uptown or downtown, almost always on a side street.
Unlike Le Pavillon, La Côte Basque and their ilk, and unlike Keith McNally’s immersive brasserie sets, which came later, these bistros were rarely fashionable. They were filled with professors and psychotherapists, Paris Review readers and Film Society of Lincoln Center members. Occasionally a passer-by out walking the dog would stand on tiptoe to peer over the curtain, but paparazzi did not stake out the doors of these establishments.
Individually, few were landmarks. Collectively, their quiet continental self-assurance, their indifference to the passage of time, not to mention their crèmes brûlées and blood sausages and Fleuries, helped form the backdrop of the city. You always thought you’d have one within walking distance. Then, one day, you didn’t.
Bistro Pierre Lapin, which the chef and restaurateur Harold Moore opened last May in the West Village, is either a very late entry into the genre, or else a homage of impressive intensity. The dining room has the forehead-height curtains — green gingham. It has Piaf on the playlist, and also Pink Martini’s “Sympathique,” which has become the “Vie en Rose” of the Spotify era, for better or worse.
The menu looks at French bistro classics through the lens of nostalgia.CreditDaniel Krieger for The New York Times
Pierre Lapin also throws in some frills that go beyond the basic formula. White tapers burn on every table, wall sconces throw off Cognac-colored light from behind lampshades the size of teacups, a collection of thin flowery china dishes supplements the chunky white bistro ware. Most of all, Pierre Lapin has that rich, creamy, antique cooking — all the stuff nouvelle cuisine tried to kill.
As soon as you order, you get a preview of what you’re in for: A length of chewy, substantial baguette arrives with a small mound of cultured butter, a pile of truffled cheese spread and a pink hunk of rustic pork pâté. On a quiet night at home, this could serve as a light dinner. At Pierre Lapin, it is a little snack to stave off hunger before the appetizers.
Going back at least as far as his days at Commerce, Mr. Moore has seemed at home with profuse helpings and sauces that settled over them like a goose-down duvet over a sleeping Saint Bernard. After closing that restaurant, he opened an ode to Southern immoderation called Harold’s Meat & Three, now just Harold’s; the most memorable thing I’ve eaten there was a Kentucky hot brown sandwich on which the Mornay sauce flowed freely. He also briefly ran a less focused study of Americana called the Greenwich Grille, where I ate a chicken potpie that I thought had potential. About a week later, I learned that the place had closed.
None of Mr. Moore’s previous kitchens went for the gut quite as gleefully as Pierre Lapin’s. Your first course there could well be, and almost certainly will be if you leave the choice to me, an avalanche of mushrooms in cream cascading over the edge of a tall slab of buttered and griddled pain de mie. But it would be a mistake to overlook the Brie au four, roughly half a pound of baked Brie melting among dried figs and walnuts, all served with toasted baguette.
I ended up ordering the Brie for the table, which freed somebody else to get the very meaty frogs’ legs in a small lake of parsley, garlic, butter and lemon juice, while another guest tried the “balle de matzo en consommé.” In English, that means a nice bowl of chicken soup with a single matzo ball so densely packed that if you tossed it out of a second-story window it would probably put a dent in a car hood. This is not a bad trait in a matzo ball unless you happen to own the car.
The lusty tune begun by the appetizers is picked up by the main courses. There is a fairly classic coq au vin, not too winy-tasting; some hefty sea scallops under toasted almonds, sensibly outfitted with endive and citrus sections; and a grouping of gnocchi, foie gras, sautéed sweetbreads and mushrooms, black truffle shavings and puffy chicken dumplings, all milling around in a Cognac-flamed cream sauce. It sounds insanely overcrowded, but is very rewarding to unpack.
We have only scratched the surface of the menu. It goes on, perhaps longer than it should, because some dishes are more appealing than others. A black sea bass “bonne femme” was simply dull instead of simple. The soupy, thin cassoulet could have used more meat and a thicker crust of bread crumbs. The garlic sauce Mr. Moore made for snails tasted less garlicky than run-of-the-mill snail butter; the snails and I never figured out what we were supposed to do with the sunny-side-up egg planted in the middle of the plate.
The menu could be trimmed by about a third. The same is most likely true for a few individual dishes, although Mr. Moore’s shambolic, celebratory cooking style is one of the reasons Pierre Lapin works as well as it does. If he tidied everything up he’d be going head-to-head with Le Coucou, a contest that would not play to his strengths. The excess, the untucked shirttails on the dishes, the incomplete thoughts on the menu are part of the restaurant’s charm.
That charm does not quite extend to the wine list, which looks like one from four decades ago. It’s almost entirely drawn from Bordeaux, Burgundy and the Rhone, with very few bottles under $75. This seems to be taking the joke a little too far — in 1971, you could still get cheap Bordeaux. I drank well, but I always spent more on it than I meant to, which is the kind of thing that can keep diners from coming back.
For dessert there is a coconut cake that has little to do with France. Dense and rich in a homespun American style that some people will love and others will find too leaden, it followed Mr. Moore here from Commerce, where it was a big hit. Other members of the lineup you already know. The chocolate mousse is deliciously dark, though not as airy as it could be. The sugar crust on the crème brûlée is burned to order.
Both are overshadowed, though, by a peculiarly likable Pavlova. It is conceived as a tart, with a meringue crust and a whipped-cream topping; once it is sliced into a white wedge, bright yellow passion-fruit curd runs down its sides. Anna Pavlova would not recognize it, but she would have liked its sense of theater.
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