Casanis

Interview, Dec, 1996 by Hal Rubenstein

Once you get to Casanis, ignore the address, 'cause you are no more in the East Village than Eddie Van Halen wants to hear the word "reunion." Casanis doesn't feel like, smell like, or move like a place where locals play Rent for real. In fact, if the place were any more Gallic, the staff would simply ignore you and faintly smile as you leave. Lucky for us, the menu is more Marseilles than Paris, so this bustling, geographically disorienting bistro is home to a heartier sort of French cuisine, and there is actually evidence of syncopated; brusque-as-a-sea-breeze charm. The catch is, it's not a rhythm Americans pick up easily - although, given enough chances, Casanis will win you over.

Italians don't. Brazilians aren't. So, why do the French seem so foreign when off their turf? (Actually, Parisians seem foreign anywhere more than seventy kilometers from Notre Dame, with the possible exception of Jean-Claude lacovelli, who co-owns three bistros including Jean-Claude, the prototype for vest-pocket bistros like Casanis.) Perhaps, according to M. Florent, of Restaurant Florent, it's because his countrymen are never happy with anything - even good news - because they know misfortune will arrive shortly. Could it be that, unlike us silly, Funny Face-loving Americans, the citizens surrounding the source of Perrier and romance are far more prone to fatalism than foolishness?

So don't expect sloppy kisses on both cheeks and a "Welcome to our humble chapeau" (as Bugs Bunny once said). Casanis's youthful management is less eager to please than it is confident in its reasonably priced food and an assumption that you've shown up because you share that admiration. Now, squeezing you in? That might be more of a problem (Casanis does not take reservations for parties of less than six).

The menu is much more breezy than the experience of getting a table. A weightless salad of frise, cherries, and goat cheese or a napoleon of crab and endive - floats down like effortless conversation with an old friend. A salmon marinade overpowers a crisp potato pancake with a freshening dash of watercress sauce. Mussels were briny and bracing one time, flat and flabby the next, but the escargot gloriously reek of garlic and butter, the mesclun salad bites as it should, and the tartare is above par for those who enjoy this protein-rich throwback.

Oddly enough, except for steak au poivre (too fatty and too tame to be a signature dish), Casanis has a well-edited roster of robust entrees. The nuttiness of snapper is enhanced by a cool, sweetening cabbage salad; monkfish stays moist when seared and swathed in mushrooms and asparagus; the full-flavored leg-of-duck confit contrasts with the fig-washed gameness of roast duck breast and the sharpness of escarole. The chicken fricassee is an almost shocking reminder of what this dish is supposed to taste like versus what you remember from your grocer's freezer. And those yummy potato pancakes are more than happy with a fine roasted loin of lamb. Mashed potatoes for one end of the table. Frites at the other. Race to see who wins. I wager it'll be a tie.

For dessert, if they have a tarte tartine available, grab it. If they aren't out of Campari grapefruit sorbet to accompany the fruit plate, try it. But anyone who orders a banana split here shouldn't expect anything more authentic than Streisand's French album. The rest - the creme brulee, the mousse - are exactly what you'd expect, nothing more, nothing less. "They are classic," says the waitress with a thin smile. "Always the same. Sometimes that is good, no?" Sometimes.

When you leave, everyone at Casanis says goodbye with that same thin smile - as they turn your table over faster than you can center your Kangol cap. Will they miss you? Not as much as you will miss them. In France, this is what they call a fine romance.