Food & Drink

Pencil in this pensive cafe

Salmon veiled with bacon are an expert pairing.

Salmon veiled with bacon are an expert pairing.

Herbs and spices perfectly flavor the black bass.

Conventional French cuisine with thoughtful updates from chef Matthew Aita and décor with a modern Brooklyn vibe combine at Le Philosophe in the East Village. (
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There’s life in the old bistro yet. Cramped, crazy-busy Le Philosophe shows how to make leaf-eating scenesters fall for duck à l’orange and lobster thermidor: lighten them just a little, and make the place look more like new Brooklyn than old Paris.

In fact, Le Philosophe looks a bit like new Paris, especially the less touristy, outer arrondissements. It has the proportions and tight seating of the old school but not its plushy, Belle Époque clichés (which in Manhattan usually mean the food will stink).

A stark perp walk of French deep thinkers’ visages dating back to Pascal adorns one wall. With due respect to the sages, my own philosophy holds that bare banquettes ought not be as rock-hard as church pews; they’re easier to forgive on nights when a warm, sexy breeze wafts in through front windows.

Edges are hard, voices shrill. Blackboard menus are pumped up to mural size above the steaming rear open kitchen. They include a list labeled “Our Farms.” What do restaurants get for promoting suppliers?

The nuisances and noise — and friendly, under-schooled waiters who often answer questions, “I don’t know” — might put you off. Don’t let them. Chef Matthew Aita has worked with Jean-Georges Vongerichten and Daniel Boulud. So have a lot of guys, but Aita knows what he’s doing.

There are ordinary Amish chicken, garganelli and insufferably omnipresent bone marrow. But the best dishes adroitly balance convention and modernization, some sneaking in hints of the herbal and Asian inflections Aita might have picked up from his former mentors.

Bouchot mussels — a reference not to place but to a growing technique that keeps them grit-free — are the plumpest, sweetest little specimens, in a crackling broth of creme fraiche and Aleppo pepper. Salmon and bacon rarely go together, but Aita’s way of “veiling” the fish changed my mind, the delicate salmon drawing in the richness of the pork.

Deep-green herbal purée lovingly scented pristine black bass; Thai chili lent polite spark to tarragon, mint and dill. Lobster thermidor — when did you last see that? — steamed in the shell is lighter on the tongue than the standard warhorse despite a coating of béarnaise and cheese.

Tournedos rossini, an even rarer animal, was a textbook stack of Madeira-bathed crouton, beef and black truffle — still an out-of-date read. The house masterpiece is duck à l’orange, the boneless meat near-pink beneath a thin sleeve of skin and fat. The syrup permeates the duck gently enough not to overwhelm it. The sour note of sherry vinegar and a dash of Thai chili and star anise offset the sweetness of fresh OJ.

Fun desserts include blanc manger topped with crushed pistachios and a shifting cast of fruit beneath, and profiteroles sprinkled with peanuts and served with salted-caramel ice cream.

But house-made sorbet “tastes like they used salt instead of sugar,” my wife said — echoing word for word a friend’s accurate insight a few nights earlier.

People were still coming in as we finished dessert after 11 p.m., including young women in glittering, shapely outfits suitable for a club.

They’d come to eat, not to booze. A few more places like Le Philosophe, and Manhattanites might quit schlepping to Brooklyn.