Le Coucou

Pike Mousse Without Apology

3.5 of 5

Soho on a weekend is a stampede of shopping bags. Walk through it to 138 Lafayette Street and you land in a French dining room that does not care what you bought. Le Coucou cooks classic French technique with seasonal produce and a straight face. The menu reads like a recipe box your grandmother would keep, if your grandmother had a very good pike supplier.

The quenelle de brochet is the dish to understand the place by: pike mousse in a lobster sauce, soft as a cloud, and I did not expect to ever call fish that. The beef tartare comes with caviar, because this is that kind of room. Whole rabbit arrives as tout le lapin, and the sole is done meunière, the way a cook learns it in the first month and spends a career perfecting. A Maine lobster dish carries the name bourse et la vie, a French joke about your wallet and your life. Take the hint.

Prices match the ambition. Entrées run from $21 to $98, mains from $52 to $95, so this is a special occasion or an expense report. The cheaper way in is lunch, with two courses at $81. Dinner runs until ten on weeknights and eleven on Friday and Saturday, and tables go through Resy. Dress like you respect the butter. Order the quenelle, then order it again in your head on the walk home.

Order this: Tartare de boeuf with caviar, Quenelle de brochet in lobster sauce, Tout le lapin, the whole rabbit, Filet de sole meunière
The damage: $$$$
Go: Dinner, early in the week, or the two-course lunch if the bill worries you
Find it: 138 Lafayette St, New York, NY 10013