Les Bons Temps

It doesn't take much imagination to step from the Center City sidewalk into a piece of the French Quarter. Just give a little blink as you stroll down 12th Street north of Sansom, pull the door handle, and head into Les Bons Temps.

Inside the elegant facade, where the name of a long-gone florist, H.H. Battles, is still scrolled in stained glass above the door, you could be inside a Bourbon Street Creole palace.

There's a grand staircase just beyond the bar that sweeps up to a mezzanine where tables perch behind wrought-iron-trimmed galleries. Bead-draped chandeliers dangle over a peach-colored dining room. And there are yet more rooms another floor up, like the purple party lounge with black leather couches and a boat that gets filled with ice and oysters for particularly grand soirees. There's such an air of Southern decadence to the space, which rambles up even farther, the only thing missing is the bordello.

At the very least, you can get a lusty bowl of good mahogany-brown seafood gumbo, or an addictive pile of deep-fried eggplant sticks tossed, down-home-style, with Tabasco and powdered sugar. That's because there is a real New Orleanian presiding here now: John Mims.

Perhaps that reflection of his native town in this classic Philadelphia space - its 80 years as a florist followed by a long string of eateries - is what called to Mims like a homing beacon. Because the ever-restless restaurateur swears he's looking to settle in.

That may be a surprise to those who've seen Mims as a man in perpetual motion since he first rose to prominence as the region's most reliable New Orleans chef nearly a decade ago at the popular BYOB Carmine's Creole Kitchen, in Havertown. Every couple of years or so, he'd move Carmine's to a bigger new location, first to Narberth, then to Bryn Mawr, where, since arriving a year ago, he said the long-desired acquisition of a liquor license hadn't been all it was cracked up to be.

The bigger locations haven't always translated into better cooking, either, judging by a sloppily cooked brunch I ate in Bryn Mawr this year. But the chance to actually own his own building prompted Mims to also take on this venture downtown.

He has some work to do before it lives up to its grand promise. The venerable space (circa 1856), which has been home to London, Odeon, Bistro Bix, Lilies and TPDS, could use more than just a fresh coat of paint. The leather chairs on the mezzanine were missing some necessary springs.