Rooster, Paris | A Talented Chef Makes a Big Noise, B+

When a rooster crows, the French transcribe the sound it makes as cocorico. Even after living in France for over thirty years, I’ve never quite been able to retool my SONY Walkman ruined Connecticut-born ears to hear that. Mais peu importe, (But that’s of no importance, or, in more current terms, whatever).  Cocorico or cockle doodle do, the crowing bird that’s making Parisians very happy right now is Rooster, chef Frédéric Duca’s charming new bistro in a quiet corner of the 17th Arrondissement.

Duca’s just returned to Paris after a very successful four-year stint as chef at Racines New York, the Lower Manhattan branch of the Parisian bistrot a vins originally founded by Pierre Jancou. Before that he won a Michelin star in 2013 as chef at L’Instant d’Or, a now gone restaurant on the Avenue George V in Paris, began his career cooking with Gérald Passédat at Le Petit Nice in Marseille and then worked as sous-chef at Le Taillevent in Paris under the late Michel de Burgo.

“New York City was fantastic,” said the chef when we chatted before dinner at his good-looking new restaurant, think a sort of a hybrid hipster-inflected Brooklyn-meets-Provence chic. To wit, an antique metal pharmacy cabinet displaying handmade ceramics from Aix-en-Provence and Brooklyn separates the bar from the main dining room.  Fifties retro wall lamps and Scandinavian modern chairs and tables give the space a funky flea-market edge, and the chef himself laid the handsome cream-colored Moroccan tile herringbone pattern floor (“It almost killed me,” says Duca).

“I loved the free-style approach to modern cooking in New York, where chefs draw inspiration from around the world, and this is what I brought back to Paris,” says Duca. “New Yorkers also like primal flavors, a taste they share with people from the south of France,” the Marseille born chef mused. “For better and worse, Paris is more refined. So at Rooster, I’m doing a personal mash on the three cities I’ve cooked in,” he explained.

This means a short menu that features three or four suggestions for entrees, mains and desserts as a way of showcasing Duca’s love of fresh produce and earthy tastes. A perfect example? The veal and razor-shell clam tartare garnished with bergamot and grated smoked ricotta that Bruno had as a starter. There’s also a dish for two to share, a roasted shoulder lamb with its kidneys and artichokes on a bed of spelt in a cocotte.

Like so many of the dishes on Duca’s menu that night, my starter was subtly different in this chef’s execution and so a pleasure for anyone weary of the wan and expensive gastronomic mannerism that has come to characterize late-stage bistronomie (modern French bistro cooking) in Paris. In this very clever riff on a classic pissaladière, or southern French tart topped with sautéed onions, black olives and anchovies, Duca replaced bread dough with tart brise (shortcrust pastry) and garnished it with a perfectly cooked rouget (red mullet) filet and some mustard cress. These adds transformed a market snack into a dish that was brawny in a very Mediterranean way, but also surprising delicate and refined.

Probably because he’d been able to read my mind, Duca added a pasta to our meal, too–homemade agnolotti with a vivid stuffing of parsley, sage and button mushrooms, which was served al dente in a gentle but perfectly sharp Parmesan cream. What really made this dish special, though, were nearly transparent ribbons of Lardo di colonnata, which added the perfect amount of salt and texture.

Duca’s a terrific seafood cook and saucier, skills that were deliciously displayed by our mains. Seared scallops topped with a hazelnut viennoise (crushed hazelnuts and a bit of bread crumbs) was a brilliant idea, since the earthy sweetness of the nut flattered the iodine-tinged sweetness of the bivalves, which were framed by roasted Jerusalem artichokes–another tonal echo of the scallop, salsify chips and an umami-rich jus de viande. A beautifully cooked piece of yellow pollack–the fish’s fleshy was pearly even though the skin had been appealingly crisped, offered another riff on the terre-et-mer (earth-and-sea) yin and yang dishes Duca composes with such skill.

I’m sure the beef dish on the menu that night–filet with parsnips, carrots, pickled citrus and a jus de daube would have been excellent–I mean, how could anything with a jus de daube be bad?, but like the true Marseillais he is, Duca exhibits a profound love of fish and seafood.

Desserts were pleasant, too, including Menton lemon cream with meringue, anise-seed sables and olive oil sorbet and bay-leaf panna cotta with cider gelee and Granny Smith apple sorbet.

If this restaurant was in South Park Slope, it would be packed at both lunch and dinner, but because this Paris location straddles the bobo Batignolles and the more bourgeois eastern precincts of the 17th, the sociological shape of the clientele here is still a work in progress.

My hope for Duca is that word of mouth spreads among all of the lawyers and legal types who have left the Palais de Justice on the Ile de la Cite for Renzo Piano’s stunning new building in Les Batignolles and that his restaurant becomes one of their canteens. One way or another, the cocorico-scored-by-Spike-Lee cooking of a chef who still misses his daily bicycle commute over the Brooklyn Bridge will definitely find me in the crowd again soon.

137 rue Cardinet, 17th Arrondissement, Tel. 01-45-79-91-48, Bus 31, 66, 528 – Stop: Parc Martin Luther King. Open Monday to Friday for lunch and dinner. www.rooster-restaurant.com Lunch menus 26 Euros and 32 Euros. Average a la carte 60 Euros.