Then there was the night I called for a reservation only to be told that an elderly lady had just crashed her car through Coquette's window. The woman, taken to the hospital but OK, apparently had issues with parallel parking.
I admit the incident made me think twice about taking a seat on the "veranda" - really a triangular traffic island that Coquette has annexed across Fifth Street. But the threat of car exhaust wafting by their pristine raw-bar plateaus hasn't dimmed the public's enthusiasm for these seats, possibly the ultimate frontier of urban alfresco dining.
Coquette, it seems, has the classic aplomb - and timeless concept - to survive brushes with disaster like Pearl White in The Perils of Pauline. Like any good flirt (that's "coquette" in French), Neff's boite has the retro-Paris look down pat, from the hexagon-tiled floor, tin ceiling and '30s lamps inside to the rattan cafe chairs that gaze out onto this boulevard stretch of Bainbridge Street.
The room pulses with the noisy energy of an authentic neighborhood bistro. And much of the young clientele on my final visit was even dressed for the part, one done up for date night in Marseilles sailor stripes and an anchor tattoo with a glass of lambic, another whose curly tresses were pinned high with a Moulin Rouge carnation.
The French bistro fare is served with just enough success (especially given the reasonable prices) by Jeremy Nolen, who was a sous-chef when the restaurant opened.
We're still waiting for someone to redefine and update French bistro cooking in the way Blue Angel did before it disappeared in that war wave of anti-Gallic sentiment. But the bistro mood is bubbling back into Center City again, with a number of present and future projects buffing the zinc. And Coquette, when it's on, is certainly more than a tease.
