French fare done just right by Bibou's Pierre and Charlotte Calmels

GREAT GRATINEE: Le Chéri's onion soup is a thing of beauty.
Mark Stehle

Most 21st-century parents have one or two kids. Pierre and Charlotte Calmels have five.

Roll call: Julie, (8), Jeanne (6), Bibou (five in May), Eloise (18 months) and Chéri (four months). It’s safe to assume that Pierre, a French chef who’s equal parts technician and artiste, and Charlotte, the ever-gracious hostess, love their three human children the most. But their fondness for their two restaurants isn’t far behind. You can’t attain the acclaim and success the couple has found with Bibou, the standard-bearer for Philly BYOBs since it opened in 2009, without tender, committed parenting. 

The baby restaurant, Le Chéri, joined the Calmels clan when the trees in Rittenhouse Square still had their leaves. They’re naked now, jagged branches snaring low, winter clouds, and Chéri, located across the street from the Square in the regal Art Alliance, has settled in following a turbulent infancy. The Calmelses split with their opening chef, Val Stryjewski, just a few weeks after opening. When I ask Pierre who has taken over, he laugh-booms: “Me!”

Compared to Bibou, he’s got a lot more room to work with in this kitchen — and more than double the number of customers to feed. Fifty seats are divided between the 108-year-old palazzo’s two dining rooms, luxurious yet homey spaces done in rococo wallpaper, leather, wood, modern chandeliers and shades of precious metals. An additional 14 can fit in the bar, and once the weather breaks, Chéri’s best asset, its courtyard, will open.

For now, sidle up to one of the fireplaces. They don’t work, but I could have sworn the puffs of heat warming my ankles were coming from them.  Or maybe it was just the crock of onion soup, a pillar of a menu that emphasizes comfort over excitement.

Some dishes are so comforting they may put you to sleep. I’m thinking of a note card of halibut, a beautiful bore with baby kale, shaved carrot, a thin mushroom broth and bamboo-rice risotto cake. That each item was exquisitely cooked was not enough to hold my attention. When food is this simple, it has to be obscenely delicious. It has to be craveable, stuff that makes you forget your desire to be surprised or wowed or intrigued because it’s just … so … damn … good.

Fortunately, Pierre does a lot of so damn good. That onion soup was an ideal example: Nothing fancy, nothing unusual or innovative, just pure, carnal satisfaction born from onions cooked on a flicker till they attained the sweetness of caramel and texture of pudding. A thorough roux, white wine and chicken broth, a crouton of day-old house-made bread and a heaping application of comté cheese form the rest of the soup’s components, though it may as well have been made of magnets for the way it drew my spoon deeper and deeper, till only dribbles remained. 

Meaty snails shone in parsley butter as green as a fresh-cut lawn, a neat communion of earthiness and grassiness with the additional surprise of chicken oysters, extra-tender nuggets of dark meat near the thigh. Baked in a whimsical, fish-shaped pastry crust and filleted tableside, the dourade for two glistened with a lemony butter sauce. 

As to be expected from Pierre, the city’s reigning liver lord, the foie gras was unreal. Aromatic vanilla quince plays current garnish to foie, which is poached in port and red wines seasoned with Sichuan peppercorns.

Like all the bread here, the brioche that accompanies the foie is baked in-house under the direction of pastry chef Rebecca Craig. Working for TLC’s Cake Boss bakery may be the gold star on her resume, but her desserts at Le Chéri will change that. Get ready to hear more about this unknown and her dark, milk and white chocolate mousses, caramel-rippled mango tarte tatin and pear charlotte, a ladyfinger tepee framing whipped cream cheese.

Even within the menu’s traditionalist scope, Pierre could take more risks — maybe within the offal-centric “Bizarre” section, which, with only two items, feels like an 11th toe. The $30 steak frites was 30 percent steak to 70 percent frites — though the latter, a twist on pommes darphin, were terrific, easily outshining the chewy bavette, a steak whose robust flavor comes at the price of tenderness.

The cocktail list is barren territory for anyone demanding more than a rosé French 75 or St. Germain spritzer. Stick to Charlotte’s wine list, a thoughtful, boutiquey collection of French and Swiss — the Calmelses met in Switzerland — bottles you wouldn’t expect to exist in the miasma of the PLCB. Reasonable markups keep drinking a doable diversion here, which is important since Le Chéri is more affordable than Bibou in the way Osteria is more affordable than Vetri — which is to say, not very. With one drink per person, tax and tip, the tab ran $90 a head, about the same as the tasting menu at Bibou. 

What I missed most at Le Chéri was Charlotte’s natural warmth in contrast to the tentative, slightly stiff service. A staff refresher could be something to squeeze in while running between the two restaurants and running her girls to ballet. If only Charlotte could duplicate herself. Moms like her are hard to find.

LE CHÉRI  |  251 S. 18th St., 215-546-7700, lecheriphilly.com. Wed.-Sun., 5-10 p.m. Appetizers, $8-$14; entrees, $18-$30; desserts, $9.