The New French.(Restaurant review)

The New French is really the new New French, since its owners have reimagined a defunct Minneapolis joint of the same name. The New French also replaces the old French of Le Gamin, the spot's previous tenant. In any case, the New French isn't French. The new French, as manifested by the New French, is new American. All of this was explained the other night, more or less, by a waiter whose T-shirt depicted the California state flag. He took care to add that, while forty remains the new thirty, the new black is harder than ever to pin down.

After you've nailed the name, you can tackle the New French's pleasingly straightforward menu, which, when coupled with the dining room's agreeably understated atmosphere, imbues a patron with a kind of ready-made I-wanna-be-a-regular yen. (It helps, these days, that everyone lusts after the West Village.) The space, small, with a couple dozen tables and a quarter as many staff, can at times be a tad cozy, but its centerpiece, an orange-white-and-gold mural by the illustrator Maira Kalman, of trees and animals and men in porkpie hats, is elegant in its ...