French fancy

The French Garden Restaurant in Sebastopol has gone through a succession of chefs since it opened in 2006, none of whom quite captured the vision of owners Dan Smith and Joan Marler. Now, and since last year, the kitchen has been in the hands of Executive Chef Patrick Quillec, and he is finally doing justice to that vision.

Here's the vision: Smith farms 30 certified organic acres west of town to supply seasonal produce to the restaurant — and the community, through sales of produce during Sunday brunch hours. If Smith doesn't grow it, local, organic suppliers do. The food at French Garden fulfills the three hallmarks of eco-conscious eating: it's organic, it's local and it's seasonal.

Nothing illustrates why this is a good idea better than the French Garden Salad ($8, 4 stars ). It's a huge mound of perfect lettuces — right now mostly red-tinged butterhead lettuce that fairly melts in the mouth and has a delicate right-from-the-garden flavor. Also from the farm, or from within the Bay Area foodshed, chopped red onion, chives, peeled cucumbers, edible flower petals of various colors, and corn kernels. The salad is dressed with creamy cumin vinaigrette. Only one ingredient comes from afar: Valbreso feta cheese, made from sheep's milk left over from the production of Roquefort blue cheese in southwest France.

Chef Quillec understands the drive to present foods of the locality, given his background. He grew up in Brittany, France, watching his chef mother buy local ingredients and prepare them in her restaurant. It was the kind of typical hands-on French restaurant where the goose was killed out back for the night's menu and the escargots were picked off the stone walls after a rain. While still a teenager, he worked in restaurants in France, then joined his sister at her restaurant in Miami, moved to North Carolina, Puerto Rico, Vermont, and Georgia, before landing in Kansas City, where he opened several restaurants and co-founded the KC Concept restaurant group. In 2010, he took all his years of experience and rescued French Garden from the difficulties it had encountered with its previous chefs.

The restaurant is elaborately designed inside with a bar and lounge area separated from the dining room by full glass partitions. Black faux-marble columns and red and cream ceiling and walls in the dining room complement murals depicting farms and country scenes in recessed half-rounds above some of the doorways. There's also a pleasant patio outside.

The service is more earnest than professional, but very friendly and accommodating nevertheless. The wine list veers between the Russian River Valley and France, and includes 30 wines by the glass, a nice feature that allows for matching several wines with different portions of the dinner. Some notable choices include Chateau Bonnet's Entre-Deux-Mers, a crisp Sauvignon Blanc from Bordeaux for $9; La Craie Vouvray, a worthy Chenin Blanc from Touraine for $10; Graton Ridge Baciagalupi Vineyard Zinfandel for $12; Moshin Dry Creek Molinari Vineyard Merlot for $10, and a Louis Latour Valmoissine Pinot Noir from Burgundy for $9.

At some restaurants, soups of the day are catch-alls for last night's leftover vegetables, but not at French Garden. A cup of the White Bean Soup ($6, 3 stars) was fresh with the farm's carrots and the green cotyledons of radish sprouts all in a light, lovely broth with the big beans.

An order of House-Cut Fries ($7, 2 stars) from farm-grown white and purple potatoes was served in a conical paper cup, like English "chips," but suffered from way too much residual oil on the fries. They came with ketchup and rosemary aioli, a nice touch.

Pork Tenderloin "Grand Ma" Quillec ($25, 3 stars) is almost a whole tenderloin sliced into seven pieces. It's cooked with prunes, sage jus, flat cippolini onions, fingerling potatoes and rainbow carrots. The rainbow varieties are carrots of various colors, and the darker red and purplish roots are rich with beneficial antioxidants. The recipe comes to us through Chef Quillec from his mother, who got it from her mother in Brittany.

Although one of our party wouldn't eat rabbit, the rest of us had no qualms about nipping into the Oz Farm Rabbit Stew ($28, 3? stars). The rabbit comes from the Oz family farm in the Alexander Valley, and it is a spectacularly delicious meat. The stew, in a red wine sauce with fingerling potatoes, rainbow carrots, onions and bay leaves, contained both white and dark meat, including offal, such as the liver.

Salmon & Sorrel ($26, 2? stars) has a connection close to home for French Garden. The owners' daughter is named Sorrel. She's an artist, lives in Paris, and did some tasty paintings for the restaurant. This dish features a fine piece of fresh salmon set on a base of summer squash and topped with a purple potato paillette (curly straws of thin-sliced potato). The fish is given a mild rather than tangy sorrel sauce, which is a brilliant combination of flavors.

Desserts were amazing. Hazelnut Nougat ($8, 3? stars) was a tower of semifreddo-like frozen nougat dressed in fraises des bois wild strawberries and golden raspberries with black currant syrup and black sesame tuiles. Chocolate Heaven ($8, 3? stars) was exactly that. Frozen dark chocolate mousse tops a Breton galette and is accompanied by warm, white-chocolate ganache.

To sum up: Chef Patrick Quillec is what French Garden has been waiting for.

Jeff Cox writes a weekly restaurant review column for the Sonoma Living section. You can reach him at jeffcox@sonic.net.