The Good King Tavern brings the south of France to south of South Street

When you have ratatouille this good, it's not hard to see why they made a movie about it.

AUBERGINE ACTION: The Good King Tavern has an affinity for eggplant.
Neal Santos

Before eating at The Good King Tavern, I had never heard of Luynes. The little village is situated like the knot in a tug-of-war that Aix-en-Provence is about to win against Marseilles, and is famous for its three international schools and a prison that looks like a grim concrete starfish. More relevant to Philadelphians, though, is that Luynes is where Paul Lyons learned to make ratatouille.

“The woman we were staying with in this little villa — Laurence was her name — she taught me right there outside on the patio table,” says Lyons, chef of the month-old The Good King Tavern. “Pretty fucking dope.”

What’s even more pretty fucking dope than the first hand lesson — it was one of many during an immersive week in the south of France, where Lyons studied regional sausage-making, croissant-baking and pastis-swilling before opening Good King — is the ratatouille he recreates back home. Sunk into a white ramekin on a wooden board, his version of the stew made me sigh with contentment and melt into my chair. Bound in a vivid tomato sauce fortified with garlic and herbs, the tender zucchini, eggplant, red peppers and onions tasted like a long-forgotten summer. I spooned it over slices of buttery, crepe-like socca, a chickpea-flour pancake served on the seaside streets of Nice “like fries on the boardwalk,” and rolled my eyes up toward Good King’s navy-painted, pressed-tin ceiling, spread out above like a Provencal night sky.

When you have ratatouille this good, it’s not hard to see why they made a movie about it.

“It was nice to get a compliment on it from Bernard [Grigri, Good King’s owner]. He tried it and said, ‘That’s pretty good,’” says Lyons. “But he’s French, so that means it’s great.”

Grigri grew up in Aix-en-Provence and came to Philly in the ’80s. His business is glassware, not restaurants; he’s a salesman of coupes and flutes to clients like Williams-Sonoma out of his company’s Brooklyn HQ. But, as Lyons points out, he’s French, and fine living for the French is not so much a hopeful pursuit as it is a perfected birthright. Usually, European aesthetes do good restaurants make. Grigri has Lyons in the kitchen to help him, as well as his daughter and business partner, Chloe, running the front of the house with a veteran team. 

Tables and booths backfill the dimly lit dining room, but the bar is the finest place to sit. If you can stomach a bit of no-game bartender-hostess flirting before the dinner rush, the industry gossip is as juicy as Lyons’ skirt steak. Charred dark on the outside but pink as a watermelon inside, each bias-cut slice of beef resonated with flavor extracted from a marinade of olive oil, lemon, roasted garlic and herbs, a gilding of hotel butter and a crown of lacy caramelized onions. Twice-fried and tossed in a spice mix, the crisp, properly salty, square-ended frites joining the steak rank among the city’s best. The secret? Nutritional yeast, which lends the fries “that crave-able taste that you want to keep eating,” a neat trick from sous chef Gary Bisignani — like Lyons, a Barbuzzo alum. 

The steak frites is an example of the bistro staples that pepper Good King’s menu — required reading, you might say, as dictated by the Grigris. But Lyons proves capable of pushing beyond the classic tropes with plates like the electric eggplant three ways. In a landscape of paprika oil auroras, shaved sunchokes and radishes, the trio of cast-iron-seared wedges, aggressively (awesomely) spicy puree and brunoised pickles reminded me of Morgan’s Pier, where Lyons spent last summer. He explores lesser-known regional specialties, too, like the house-made Morteau sausage, a smoked chicken-and-pork chub flavored with white wine, nutmeg and cumin. 

While the menu is on the small side, it’s augmented nightly by a handful of specials written on chalkboards and mirrors around the restaurant: charcuterie boards, frogs’ legs, lamb shanks for two — all I have to try another time. Not bad for a North Jersey skateboarding brat who fell into cooking while earning a B.A. in English at Temple and working as a food runner at Bar Ferdinand. His skills are impressive, and proof you don’t need culinary school to become a great cook. 

This is not to say Lyons is faultless. He’s got a wicked affection for salt — and this is coming from someone who loves salt — realized in the bibb-and-pickled-shallot salad served with the socca/ratatouille setup, as well as in a boat of escargot in a muddy sauce of garlic-and-butter vampire repellent. The Morteau sausage arrived over potato gratin, the shoddy construction of which the chef almost bragged about: “Bake that shit, you don’t have to make it the most beautiful in the world.” True, but you need to at least make sure your cream sauce isn’t broken.

Fortunately, Lyons found dairy redemption in the rich, anglaise-style lavender ice cream topping of a simple and lovely apple tart. He does all the desserts here, too. It’s just another duty the 29-year-old who arrives every day at nine in the morning proudly heaps on his plate, like an extra serving of ratatouille.

The Good King Tavern | 614 S. Seventh St., 215-625-3700, thegoodkingtavern.com. Daily, 5 p.m.-1 a.m., bar open until 2 a.m. Appetizers, $4-$10; entrées, $12-$15; desserts $6.