The barrel above the front door suggests a weinstube, one of those inexpensive Mitteleuropean wine bars featuring rustic dishes prepared by the proprietor's frauchen. The interior follows suit—it's barrel-shaped and jammed with inexpensive, rickety blonde tables.

Bar Boulud does have a decidedly homey appeal, that's for sure, although the food happens to be pure French and the wine prices soar into quadruple figures. Economical it is not. It's located on pricey real estate across from Lincoln Center, and the cuisine comes from chef-turned-entrepreneur Daniel Boulud, most famous as the owner of the aristocratic restaurant Daniel.

Boulud is following the lead of chefs who can't say no to a restaurant project, but at least he's staying with what he does better than anybody else in America: upscale French comfort food. It's clear from the menu and the food on display that he's satisfying his love of pâtés and terrines—basically meatloaf done up with cream, brandy, truffles, foie gras, and anything else that costs a lot. For hamburger-loving New Yorkers, this is another way to indulge a passion for ground meat.

There are eight such items on the menu, and the best to me was the tourte de canard, which is duck, foie gras, and figs enclosed in a thin pastry shell. (The pastry is leaden, as is to be expected. Such wrappings are more about French tradition than French cuisine.)

The worst that can be said about the rest of the food is that the recipes are relentlessly conventional—lamb stew, roasted chicken, boudin blanc. The best is that such a style of cooking is terribly missed. (If you haven't been missing boudin blanc, you'll start longing for it after you taste Boulud's exceptionally creamy version.) My only complaint is that many Bar Boulud dishes are underseasoned, which often can be said about French food. They're also undersalted, which almost never can be said about French food.

One warning: If you happen to admire fresh greenery, this is not your place. The kitchen loves to marinate plant life. The decorator made a feeble gesture toward satisfying a need for vegetation by placing a bizarre, bush-like object resembling a Chia Pet at the bottom of the stairs leading to the washrooms.

The wine list is exceptional, although all those bottles costing thousands makes me think Boulud is hoping that tuxedo-bedecked swells will stop in après-opera. I can't think of any compelling reason to drink Château Pétrus in this ambience, although the wobbly tables provide so much incidental movement that you won't have bother swirling your wine.

1900 Broadway (between West 63rd and West 64th Streets), New York, NY; 212-595-0303