AT COQUETTE Bistro and Raw Bar, the menu has a French accent, but the dishes are reassuringly familiar: rich onion soup, a grilled hanger steak with a pat of butter melting on top, roasted chicken with mashed potatoes, and the like.
The Queen Village restaurant-bar is part of a new wave of places aiming to be authentically French, but not so haute you can't throw back a beer with your plate of mussels and frites, or stop by for a glass of wine and a light meal of salade or paté.
These newcomers aren't trying to compete with Le Bec-Fin. They want to be your mid-priced, go-to neighborhood spot.
Cochon is a country French BYOB on the border between Queen Village and Bella Vista that debuted last month. Zinc Bistro a Vins is a wine reinvention, from the owner of Center City's Caribou Cafe, of the former Wash West BYOB La Boheme as a restaurant and wine bar.
That homey French cooking is suddenly trendy makes sense to Cary Neff, a native of the area and veteran restaurateur who also owns the quintessentially Philly Sansom Street Oyster House.
"I think it has to do with the feel and vibe you get in a restaurant like this - there's a realness to it," Neff said. "People feel good in places like this. They don't feel like they have to put on any airs when they walk in. You can come in shorts, you can come in flip-flops, you can order a glass of beer.
"I think French bistros like this and the other ones opening up right now offer that kind of vibe, and by the way, the food is great, and you can have fun with it."
At the same time, all three restaurants approach their French connections differently.
For Olivier Desaintmartin, a native of the Champagne region who has lived in the United States for more than a decade, the bistro is still second nature. He based his cozy version - which has exposed brick walls, mirrors as accents and a zinc bar (naturellement) modeled after an antique one dating from 1919 - on his favorite bistros from the Marais section of Paris.
The menu offers the kind of comfort food his mother served him and the types of dishes you'll still find scribbled on a chalkboard in a typical Parisian cafe.
There's a spinach and goat cheese omelette, escargots in puff pastry, rabbit stew and the requisite steak frites, as well as a raw bar.
You can sip an old-school aperitif like a kir royale (Champagne with creme de cassis) while perusing the menu, and select from a changing rotation of 25 French wines by the glass.
