We'll Always Have Paris

I've been to Paris in August, and it was no picnic. The place is a wasteland of shuttered boulangeries and vacant park benches. The entire country takes a national break in late summer, and you have to be a serious loser to be stuck at some Eiffel Tower kiosk scooping ice cream for Japanese tourists. The natives who haven't managed to flee the City of Lights will make you pay and pay with every abruptly turned back, every curled lip. There is no more despised being on Earth than the American in Paris during August.

But about this time each year, I develop a craving for breakfasts of fresh baguettes smeared with sublime, sweet-sour French butter, and big cups of café au lait. I want homemade patés, artisanal cheeses, handmade chocolates. I've been yearning for the atmosphere of Paris without the expense and the insults. So I recently moseyed over to Le Café de Paris on Las Olas, the oldest French restaurant in Fort Lauderdale, to see if I could conjure up a bit of je ne sais quoi.

Both Le Café de Paris and its sister entity, the more upscale French Quarter just around the corner, are owned by the Swiss-born Louis Flematti. The former opened in 1962 as a small bistro and expanded over the years into two large rooms, an upstairs lounge, and an outdoor patio. Chef Andreas Hebegger has been in the kitchen at Le Café de Paris going on ten years. The place is decorated like a stage set -- somebody's kitschy idea of a Parisian café, replete with Francophilic clichés: a black cat with its back arched, faux windows spilling flower boxes, cheesy striped awnings, fake gaslights, exposed brick, and Edith Piaf singing "La Vie en Rose" on a loop. On weekends, the outdoor patio is crowded with young couples eating oysters Rockefeller and smoking cigars; the interior rooms are busy with families and middle-aged locals. I don't object to the musty décor, to the fraying tablecloths, or the nicked-up flatware. If a place survives 43 years in downtown Fort Lauderdale, it must be because the food is magnifique.

At least, that was the theory that on a recent Friday evening propelled me and my spouse there, where we almost immediately found ourselves examining inexplicable burns on the plastic-encased menu. It's quite a menu -- running the gamut from crepes, pastas ($13.95 to $15.95), and steak tartare ($9.95) to fillet of snapper Louisianne ($20.95); from bouillabaisse Floridienne ($22.95) to imported Dover sole Meuniere ($28.95); from veal cordon bleu ($20.95) to Chateaubriand bouquetiere for two ($62). Steak Dianne ($27.95) or filet au poivre noir will be flambéed tableside in cognac. It sounds like authentic, '50s-style haute cuisine, the kind of stuff Grace Kelly and Jimmy Stewart might have ordered from New York's 21 Club, which to this day serves a similar menu, right down to the steak tartare.

There's also a Celebration Dinner for two ($72), which includes a bottle of wine and your choice of entrées, like beef Wellington or duck aux fruits. These prices are comparable to most upscale local restaurants (although the seafood crepe and mussels in cream are more expensive over at the French Quarter). Give me an excellent plate of veal sweetbreads aux champignon ($22.95) and I'm willing to shell out the dough and overlook a few chips in the stoneware.

"Sit still; we're not going anywhere," I told my significant other. She'd taken one bite of the braided baguette at Café de Paris and was ready to bolt. She claims the breadbasket tells you everything you need to know about a restaurant. And the one on our table contained Nabisco bread sticks in plastic wrappers and a pale loaf with the taste and texture of a bag of pre-frozen cotton balls. Bread is the foundation of a good meal and of a just society (historians credit a baguette shortage with launching the French Revolution). Nobody with an ounce of Gallic spirit could dish up such an insipid loaf.

Our waiter came rushing over mumbling something. It wasn't, apparently, "Can I answer any questions about the menu?" or "Welcome, mesdames, to our fine establishment." Judging from his look of impatience, I guessed he'd said, "Are you ready to order?"

We were. I requested the frog legs Provençal ($22.95), cooked in garlic and butter and billed as "fresh from the Everglades." Ms. A requested the beef Wellington, "baked in pastry crust, duxelle, sauce on the side" ($28.95). And we ordered a round of appetizers: gratinéed onion soup ($5.95), escargots bourguignon ($6), paté de chef ($5.50).