Petite Cerise

Another month, another French restaurant. One thing that separates this fresh face from the pack is what it excludes — French onion soup, for instance.“A lot of places do that already,” says chef-owner Jeremiah Langhorne, heretofore best known for the Dabney, his love letter to the Mid-Atlantic.

Fewer places are making buckwheat crepes filled with salami and goat cheese, a fond memory of the chef’s from a food market in Rennes, or lavishing so much love on sauces. Grilled mussels get cloaked with a ruddy choron sauce zapped with threads of chorizo; asparagus comes with a bowl of frothy hollandaise and whipped cream; and braised chicken arrives in a swell of cream, morel mushrooms and vin jaune, the “yellow wine” with a flavor similar to sherry. “A little extra sauce is almost like an extra dish,” says Langhorne, who buys good baguettes for dispatching the liquid riches.