Former Le Francais chef lands successfully at brasserie

The chef is Roland Liccioni, a culinary wizard whom suburbanites will know from his two stints at Wheeling's sadly missed Le Francais. The proprietor is the genial Bob Djahanguiri, a veteran restaurateur best known as the impresario who kept cabaret alive in Chicago through the 1980s and '90s at venues such as Toulouse and Yvette and, most recently, showcased live music at Westchester's Vesuvio Cafe. The singer is Nan Mason, who's been acclaimed as one of the city's top cabaret artists.

With the price of gas being what it is, I hoped to recommend this place as a one-stop evening's entertainment in the city. Yet somehow, it seems less than the sum of its parts.

Weekend dining will require advance planning. Friday and Saturday nights are booking up several weeks ahead. The place wasn't designed for such crowds -- there's no foyer (a canvas hut outside the entrance only partly foils the winter chill entering with the opening door) and there's no good place to wait for a table; the bar is as full as the rest of the place.

Seating is elbow to elbow and noise levels are high, though better farther back in the dining room. And don't expect a "brasserie" in any traditional sense of the word -- there's a pleasant wine list but little selection of beers and aperitifs.

My hopes of sneaking into the place unobserved appeared foiled at first by a harried Djahanguiri at the host's stand. But that he recognized my face seemingly without remembering the person behind it was the first sign of a stressed distractedness that permeated service throughout the evening.

The kitchen, however, excels throughout. If you loved Liccioni's cooking at Le Francais, here's a chance to enjoy it at a somewhat lower price, albeit with a longer drive and fewer service amenities. The menu is shorter and includes simpler fare, but the chef remains at the top of his form, with starters like his luscious lobster ravioli facon Vietnamiene, lobster mousse in a wonton wrapper with poached shrimp and lightly pickled cucumbers.

Alas, there is no foie gras, due to the dumb Chicago ban, but the pate maison brought us four different house-made pates, each delightful and excitingly varied, from a smooth and silky liver terrine to a coarser country pate, accompanied by pickled daikon radish, cornichons and mustard. Our server couldn't tell us what the different types were, however.

Soups include Liccioni's notable duck consomme, rich and unctuous, with tiny truffled ravioli floating in it, and the salade Lyonnaise is a true classic, with plenty of applewood-smoked bacon bits.

Loup de mer, Mediterranean sea bass, comes out perfectly cooked, atop a mound of wild rice and a light coating of creamy sauce blanquette. More traditional brasserie fare can be found in the tournedos of beef, medallions of tenderloin seared to smokiness and paired with mushrooms and pommes pont neuf, crispy logs of mashed fried potato. Duck breast, served medium rare, with crispy confited duck leg and thyme-infused lentils makes a wonderfully comforting option as well.

For dessert, don't pass up the souffles (raspberry, hazelnut, chocolate or Grand Marnier), wonderful and worth waiting for, though the passion fruit creme brulee and vanilla baba with pineapple sorbet are delicious, too.

Perhaps because this is the first Djahanguiri venue to attract patrons primarily for its food, he's limited music to just Friday and Saturday nights and a single singer, rather than the parade of national acts that once graced Toulouse and Yvette.

At 10 p.m. on weekends Mason takes up her trademark spot on top of the piano, with husband Terry Higgins at the keyboards. Sight lines to the performers seem to have been sacrificed for more dining tables. They're hard to see except from seats at the rectangular bar up front.

Possibly that's why Mason, who normally holds a crowd in the palm of her hand, seemed unable to overcome the loud chatter of the place during the first set on a recent Saturday. She kept mainly to subdued delivery of standards, only occasionally breaking out into the fervent performance she's known for, such as a spirited rendition of "This is My Life," the Shirley Bassey signature, one of her theme songs.

Higgins is a great trumpeter, but as a pianist relies overly on the bells and whistles of an electronic band-in-a-box set atop the baby grand.

Things got livelier in the midnight set, after the diners had mostly cleared out, and the audience was mainly the bar crowd, a mix of gray-haired Nan fans and game, 20-something, Cosmo drinkers trying to dance in the postage-stamp space in front of the piano.

But the waitstaff had largely left, too, and those of us still at dining tables couldn't get waited on for after-dinner drinks.

So here's my recommendation. Don't try to do both dinner and music at Old Town Brasserie. Go to Old Town Brasserie for dinner. Get a seat at the back of the dining room and pretend you're just there to have dinner. Eat a leisurely meal. Then get up and leave.

After midnight, come back in and take a seat at the bar for drinks and music, as if you hadn't been there early on at all.

Old Town Brasserie

1209 N. Wells St., Chicago, (312) 943-3000

Cuisine: Contemporary French

Setting: Crowded white-tablecloth spot on the edge of Old Town

Price range: Appetizers $6 to $12; entrees $20 to $30; desserts $7 to $10; wine $7 to $11 by the glass, $26 to $125 by the bottle

Hours: Dinner 5 to 9 p.m. weeknights, 10 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays; limited late-night menu available after dinner

Accepts: Major credit cards; cash only; reservations (essential on weekends)

Also: Full bar; valet parking; live music from 10 p.m. to 2:30 a.m. Fridays and Saturdays