Benoit in Midtown Is the Bistro That Will Take You to Paris

Like many New Yorkers, I have convinced myself that a rickety fire escape platform is a terrace and that a segment of the Empire State Building’s antenna seen through a sliver of window constitutes a panoramic skyline view. The same capacity for wishful self-delusion must be what keeps us going to bistros that are nothing like anything in France.

The chalkboards in painstaking cursive that misspell half the menu; the sad frites and scrawny mussels and refrigerated cheeses served in compliance with a non-Gallic health department; the old-guard dishes put through modern contortions until they end up looking like Gérard Depardieu wearing Jeggings — we put up with these signs of forgery because we want the real thing so badly.

To get it, we need to go to France. But right now, the most perfect substitute bistro in New York is Benoit.
It took Alain Ducasse, who owns the century-old original in Paris, a few years to get its Midtown incarnation right. “It’s odd the way Benoit does some dishes so well but misses the bull’s-eye with mainstays that should get the most finicky attention,” Frank Bruni wrote shortly after it opened in 2008, pinning one star on his review in The Times. A year later, in an unstarred update, Julia Moskin found a menu that was coming into focus but still carried an occasional “hint of airline food.” She also wrote that the servers “seem to hope that dinner customers will leave early and stay away forever.”
Philippe Bertineau isn’t cooking airline food. He is the restaurant’s third chef. With any luck, Mr. Ducasse won’t need a fourth for a long time.