A bistro in more than a name

By Alison Arnett, June 02, 2005

The French term ''bistro" has been embraced by American restaurateurs and slapped on everything from high-concept, high-priced places to Italian restaurants to Asian fusion joints, to the point that what a bistro actually is (including whether to spell it with a ''t" at the end) gets a little blurry. No wonder it takes a Frenchman to straighten us out.

Jacky Robert, a native of Normandy, has been the chef of several haute cuisine kitchens, from the old Ernie's in San Francisco to Maison Robert here and Chatham Bars Inn on the Cape. Now he wants simplicity, Robert says in a phone interview. And to a Frenchman, that's the real meaning of a bistro: A small restaurant, with a casual ambience, that serves a wide variety of food at reasonable prices.

Petit Robert Bistro opened April 1 along a stretch of Kenmore Square that is suddenly becoming restaurant-rich, including Great Bay, the Foundation, the soon-to-open Eastern Standard, and several longtime ethnic restaurants. Robert and his partner, Loic LeGarrec, who is the general manager, chose to serve the whole menu all day and evening in the small, two-story space. With Robert -- often wearing a distinctive black chef's jacket -- visible in the kitchen at the back, a wine menu with good range and reasonable prices, and even steak and lamb dishes under $20, Petit Robert can be a welcome haven.

At this stage in his career, Robert says, he wants to please diners instead of creating cutting-edge cuisine. To that end, his menu is long, broad, and eclectic. There are bistro classics such as a thick onion soup gratineed with a rich topping of cheese, and a plate of three varieties of pate garnished with cornichons and toast points. But there are departures, too, such as a colorful vegan pate of bands of spinach, mushroom, red pepper, and tomato, that's quite delicious. There are also dishes seldom seen elsewhere, at least in Boston, like a daily special of delicate and perfectly done calves' brains cooked in browned butter and topped with capers and a sprig of chervil.

The variety makes navigating the menu interesting visit after visit, and though some of the dishes can be lackluster -- and, similarly, the accompaniments of slivered red peppers, green beans, and leeks can get a little monotonous -- there's always a few more that look worth trying.

Potage sante, a classic French concoction denoting health, is a puree of leeks, green beans, asparagus, and sorrel in a potato-soup base enriched with a little cream. It's delightful and very filling, and makes a perfectly satisfying lunch on a cool, rainy spring day. Tiny escargot prove to be tender, but the dish is really just an excuse to ingest copious amounts of garlic. A salad of endive and radicchio matches strong vegetables to a sturdy mustard dressing flecked with bacon and a big slice of mango, an appealing alternative to the usual green salad. Two sturdy legs of confited duck meld their salty flavors with a large Toulouse sausage and braised cabbage, a rustic and delightful dish.

The most appealing dishes are those with strong, clear flavors. Roast chicken, with both dark and white meat, is excellent: the skin crackly and golden, and the flesh moist and properly cooked. Sauteed calf's liver could benefit from more caramelized onions, but the bacon is delicious with the creamy liver, and the mashed potatoes, which also accompany other dishes, are first-rate. A mustard coating elevates roast rabbit to a treat, its flavor deeper than chicken but not gamey.

The fish dishes, by comparison, seem rather pallid. Broiled cod in a lemon beurre blanc fades from memory almost immediately, and the best part of salmon in a sorrel sauce is the slightly bitter taste of the sorrel. Seared tuna with a seaweed salad suffers from dryness, but scallops -- each golden-crusted mollusk topped with chopped tomatoes and garlic -- make a lilting, light meal.

Dining out always has several purposes, eating and social atmosphere among them. If the point of a bistro is a rollicking atmosphere, Petit Robert certainly qualifies. But its early popularity and petite size mean that the restaurant, especially the upstairs, is cramped, with waiters practically doing pirouettes to keep from crashing into diners and one another. And all the hard surfaces help make the place noisy, so much so that shouting is often necessary, especially when the sound system is pounding out one too many Edith Piaf tunes, or when the CD player gets stuck so that all you can hear are the digital reverberations above the voices and scraping chairs.

Service at one lunch is halting and slow, making the ''express lunch" concept of the menu almost laughable. But the waitstaff during evening visits mix competence with friendliness, smoothly managing to make our parties feel cosseted even on busy nights.

The bistro, designed with a pastry bar downstairs, places an emphasis on desserts. When pastry chef Kristen Lawson's lemon souffle appears on our table, there are sighs at the ethereal taste. A chocolate gateau flanked by an Eiffel tower constructed of chocolate creates another stir; the cake is intensely chocolaty and smoothly textured. A tarte tatin has a lovely caramelized topping, though it doesn't quite scale the heights of the old Maison Robert standard, and an espresso Napoleon needs crisper puff pastry. But silken tofu pudding with a scoop of raspberry sorbet stretches vegetarian into dessert in a delicate and tasty ending.

A successfully sweet ending always sends us out happy, and makes us eager for more of Robert's way with the bistro.