Coquette

Coquette Bistro & Raw Bar has a habit of flirting with calamity.

The chef and his sous-chef/wife quit suddenly just five weeks after the opening of this much-anticipated Queen Village bistro. The reason?

"They said the kitchen was too hot," says owner Cary Neff.

Coquette has a lively bar backed by a patined mirror to go with its French bistro theme. But it took nearly three months for the liquor license and wines to arrive, thanks in part to a "routine" protest (since withdrawn) from state Sen. Vincent J. Fumo's office.

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.

There is something to be said for a platter of oysters glistening beneath the briny chill of their natural liquor. And Coquette has already established itself as one of the few good raw bars east of Broad, which isn't surprising considering that Neff's Sansom Street Oyster House is the best raw bar west of Broad. Our bluepoints were ideal, as were the meaty Skookums in their ruffle-edged shells. I devoured the sweet, fleshy snap of the littleneck clams and the tender moistness of delicately poached shrimp cocktail.

When it comes to actual cooking, Coquette's kitchen generally delivers solid renditions of bistro basics. The Lyonnaise salad has a bracingly acidic vinaigrette to counter the bitter frisee greens and the richness of lardon bacon, cubed potatoes, and carefully poached egg.

The cassoulet is a hearty reason in itself to come Wednesday night, when it's the plat du jour, the meatily flavored white beans nestled into a terrine around a shank of herby duck confit, soft boudin blanc sausage, and a caramelized strip of slab bacon.

Coquette serves a fine steak-frites for $17, the hanger meat permeated with a garlicky marinade, the fries handmade (though they could have been more crisp). The "Bar steak," a cut of boneless short rib, was tenderized for a quick sear rather than a braise, and I savored the marbled meat's flavor as it mingled with the side of creamed spinach and the "a cheval" yolk of a sunny-side-up egg.

A deftly pan-seared skate in brown butter, draped over a tomato-bread salad, was a moist rendition of a bistro classic (though I wish the croutons had better crunch). Huge scallops and steamed littlenecks came over an updated chowder of lightly creamed corn broth with potatoes and leeks.

The tang of bubbling-hot Comte cheese wafting across the table made the onion soup irresistible, but the addition of bacon was a heavy-handed embellishment to the soup's rich flavors. Likewise, the last thing those plump but naturally brackish Portuguese sardines needed was extra salt that even the sweet garnish of roasted peppers couldn't quench.

Other dishes needed more finesse. The Friday night bouillabaisse had the fishiness of oversteeped stock. I'd have liked the flavorful leg of lamb grilled rather than fried, Milanese style, inside a dull breading.

Coquette's desserts also need fine-tuning, with a lighter touch on lavender in the over-floral creme brulee, and fewer ice crystals in the homemade ice creams, flavored with clever touches like apple cider.

The service should also rethink its manners, if Suresh Joseph is to be believed. Joseph, a cell biologist at Thomas Jefferson University, was simmering at the bar after receiving a brush-off from his server, and a long wait for dry roasted chicken, because "there was a famous food critic in the house and that his attention[s] were therefore being diverted."

Bad excuse - even if I had, unfortunately, been spotted. If it's any consolation, our service wasn't so snappy, either, and my roasted chicken (eaten on a previous visit) was also memorably dry. So much for special treatment.

The crack in Coquette's second Liberty Bell just got perilously wider than it should have been. Then again, flirtation with calamity is Coquette's most frequent plat du jour.