There aren’t a great many benefits to blogging. Fielding moronic comments that demand an order of magnitude more effort to deconstruct than to make isn’t nearly as much fun as people think. But when I wrote about the efforts to get reservations at Le CouCou, a wonderful thing happened. They reached out to me and gave me the reservations we wanted.

Last night was our dinner at Le CouCou. We approached it with some minor trepidation, as experience is that the higher the expectations, the more easily we will be disappointed. But truth be told, our expectations were sky high. And…

Le CouCou was fabulous.

As we entered, the memory of the old Bouley struck both Dr. SJ and me. There was no scent of apples, but there was still something of a clean break from the street into a world of French dining set by candles. This was proven at the table, where a tall white taper was burning. Not a puny votive. Not an electric faux candle. But a real taper.

We have a fear. The pervasive casualness that has overcome society will spell the death of gracious dining. People will no longer care whether the table cloths are linen or paper. People won’t notice the weight of the fork in their hand. People won’t care if their wine is served in crystal or glass. Or plastic, or whether the glass was meant for Burgundy or Bordeaux. We fear these will be lost in transition. Most of you won’t care, don’t see any reason to care, and will shrug at this fear. And that, from my fearful perspective is why it will be lost.

Aside from the staff, I was the only person in the place wearing a tie. The fellow at the table next to me was wearing blue jeans with an open collar shirt. The women with whom he was dining was dressed in a lovely black sheath. There was once a time when no one would dine out at a fine restaurant in jeans. Men wore ties. Jackets at the minimum, though suits were de rigueur. Before that, it was formal wear. You’ve seen Downton Abbey, right?

Le CouCou isn’t sure whether it’s a bistro or a fine French restaurant. The chairs are what one would find at a street cafe, but with cushions. But there is a maitre d’hotel, captains, sommelier, waiters down to the busboys. When they fill your water glass, they hold a napkin on the opposing side so that no water splashes on the table. Or the diner. They brush off the table between courses, which may be more to chastise you for being sloppy with your bread crumbs than anything else.

The staff doesn’t hover over you, as they annoyingly do at some of the pretentious overpriced restaurants, where they confuse intrusion with service. They are there when they should be and gone when they shouldn’t. When I went to take my first sip of wine, I noticed lipstick on the glass. The captain noticed that I noticed, and asked to replace not just my glass, but the bottle of wine as well, since it had already been poured. It was unnecessary, and I declined, though I took the new glass.

The food.  We hoped for a tasting menu, but it wasn’t to be, so we decided to share all our dishes for the sake of tasting as much as possible. We began with a veal terrine, and a second, unexpected, hors d’oeuvre appeared at our table as well, poireaux, leeks with hazelnuts on top.

After that, we had the quenelle de brochet in sauce américaine, for which Le CouCou is already famous. Afterward, it was halibut in beurre blanc, which is perhaps the most basic and demanding test for a French chef. If you can’t make a beurre blanc that will cause a diner to melt, you would do better to cook bratwurst, Germany’s revenge on the world.

But beneath the rather petite filet of halibut was fermented daikon in long, spaghetti-like strips, that changed everything. Halibut is a perfectly innocuous fish to deliver the beurre blanc, but the dimension of sourness from the daikon was shockingly right.

The next course was duck breast with black olives in a reduction, together with foie gras and a thrice-cooked kumquat. Aside from the breast coming from an unendowed duck, the fruit accompaniment was supposed to be fig, which made sense. The kumquat, a bitter fruit, ruined the flavor of the first bite of foie gras. Lesson learned.

We passed on the cheese course, as it was “local cheese” from Wisconsin, Indiana and California, and chose a Meyer lemon chiboust, but inexplicably a “palate cleanser” of Mandarin ice arrived in a hollowed out orange with frozen bitter mandarin orange around the top and a surprise within. My first taste was unpleasant, and I was about to turn it away until Dr. SJ showed me the vanilla ice cream within. It turned out shockingly wonderful.

The chef, Daniel Rose, created a restaurant that is both modern in its unpretentiousness and classic in its food and style. No, it’s not the formality of the old days. There will never be another Lutece, and Taillevent will not open a New York branch. But there was a graciousness to Le CouCou that must persist, a quality to its food and service that still remembers what fine French food should be.

If this is lost, and the only thing left is overpriced mediocre food served to kids in blue jeans who pick wine by the price and aren’t put off by waiters in Megadeth t-shirts, there will be no alternative to a future of mediocrity. No one will force you to go to Le CouCou if it’s not your style, but at least you know you can. If you can get reservations. I’ll be back.