A MAN OF GASCONY TAKES HIS ACT UPTOWN

In the far southeastern corner of Paris, in the gastronomically deprived 12th arrondissement , there was founded in the mid-1970s a modest-looking, warmly furnished little bistro called Au Trou Gascon. It promptly became one of the best-loved, and best, restaurants in the city--serving both the traditional dishes of the young patron’s native Gascony ( foie gras , garbure , confit de canard , etc.) and an ever-widening repertoire of contemporary creations based on that region’s excellent raw materials.

In January of this year, on the posh rue de Castiglione, a few steps from the Place Vendome, an elegant new restaurant with the curious name of Carre des Feuillants made its debut, featuring a menu graced with such upscale post- nouvelle refinements as warm langoustine salad with green mangoes, “carpaccio” of scallops with caviar, and noisettes of she-deer with sherry sauce and walnuts.

At first glance, it would be difficult to imagine two restaurants with less in common. But that young man from Au Trou Gascon--whose name is Alain Dutournier--owns this place, too, and is in fact now devoting almost all of his time to it. And he has become, in the process, perhaps the capital’s most controversial chef.

Dutournier has long sought a more appropriate setting for the contemporary side of his culinary abilities. What he ended up with instead was a berth in a new shopping court built around an early-17th-Century monastery once inhabited by a group of monks who were called the Feuillants. (A carre is simply a city block or a square; the restaurant’s name might thus be loosely translated as “The Feuillants’ Turf.”)

The place is hardly monasterial-looking: There is an atrium entrance, faced in gray marble; the walls are paneled in shiny reddish-blond wood, and the sconces are ornate Venetian glass; strange hyper-realist paintings of vegetables hang in one room, old hunting prints of dogs with birds in their mouths in another; there is an attractive glass-enclosed kitchen--a rarity in France. Though there’s a kind of Parisian polish to the way the place, I would bet that most Parisians have never seen anything quite like it before.

But it is not the decor that has made Carre des Feuillants so ardently talked-about: In the 1986 Guide Gault-Millau, the restaurant was awarded an excellent 18/20 score; the only trouble is, the guidebook was published a month or so before the restaurant opened. True, the rating was given in parentheses--but this qualification was dropped in an article in the Gault-Millau magazine, also out before the place fired up its ovens. This gastronomic gun-jumping sent every reviewer in town scurrying to the restaurant--probably as much in hopes of being able to fault Gault-Millau as to criticize the establishment itself.

But the establishment apparently offered much to criticize--disorganized service, long waits between courses, overcooked meats, uninspired desserts. Not one first-week review I saw was entirely complimentary, and a few were downright snide.

I waited until the second week myself, and then had two meals at Carre des Feuillants--one a knockout and the other a disappointment. The first was a solo lunch at which I had two dishes, both extraordinary, that were not only things I had never tasted before but things I had never imagined . The first was a rich, corned-beef-red terrine of wild duck studded with chestnuts, garnished with an opulent sweet-wine gelee and a little compote of cumin-flavored onions--a dish I can only call aggressively delicious. (It was almost a little too aggressive, I must add: Its one fault was that it hid three little fragments of bone, which certainly ought not to have been there.)

The second was a wonderful weirdo of a concoction--a pastilla de morue a la vinaigrette d’oursins , which is to say a Moroccan-style pastry, light and flaky but also slightly chewy, filled with pieces of salt cod and thinly sliced al dente potatoes, seasoned with fresh mint and several other herbs and moistened with a sharp sea-urchin vinaigrette with tiny bits of lemon peel and green tomato. I loved this blend of textures and flavors--part-Spanish, part-North African, part-who-knows-what. I finished the meal with a cold pistachio and nougat gateau , which somehow reminded me of kid-stuff birthday cake, and which I liked in spite of myself--and I walked out thinking that Dutournier had moved uptown in more ways than one.

Dinner a few nights later was another story: The best course was a pairing of six Marennes oysters with a well-spiced crepinette sausage (though here again, in the sausage, there lurked a morsel of bone). A shellfish soup with pearl barley, on the other hand, was simply boring--despite the very good little mussels it contained. A dish of braised boneless oxtail, wrapped in spinach leaves, tasted fine but missed some twist or other to turn it into a fancy-restaurant dish--and the advertised coulis of cepes was impossible to find. (And yet again , in this “boneless” dish, there was a piece of bone; clearly this is a serious problem in the kitchen.) A turbot filet with saffron sauce, stuffed with a shellfish mousse, was fresh and properly cooked but was like a hundred other similar dishes. A sampling of pastries was unmemorable. Had I not enjoyed such a remarkable lunch at the restaurant, I would ascribe these failings to opening jitters; but I can’t believe that Dutournier (assisted here by his longtime sous-chef , Gerard Carrigues) will be satisfied with producing less than real 18/20 food for long.

Meanwhile, its many fans will be glad to hear Au Trou Gascon continues happily along, under the direction of Dutournier’s wife. A wonderful noontime meal there recently included the restaurant’s superb duck foie gras , widely thought to be the best in Paris; one salad of marinated salmon on a crisp and biting bed of scallions, wild mushrooms, and assorted greens, and another of duck cracklings and sweetish confit gizzards with curly endive; a daurade (sea bream) tartare with ginger, capers, and chives; some mignons of venison in a dark brown sauce with a hint of chocolate, accompanied by great butterfly broccoli, celery root puree, and a splendid baked apple, dripping with cinnamon and butter; and a classic confit de canard , absolutely perfect, served with a rustic variation on potatoes Anna and a nice small salad.

After so satisfying a repast, I couldn’t help feeling just a little bit sorry--as I sat there over a snifter of superb Armagnac from the restaurant’s formidable collection--for those swells over on the rue Castiglione, who were probably picking bits of bone out of their duck terrine.

Au Trou Gascon, 40 rue Taine, 12th arrondissement, Paris, telephone 43.44.34.26; Carre des Feuillants, 14 rue de Castiglione, 1st arrondissement, Paris, 42.86.82.82.