Can Can Brasserie

	Can Can Brasserie Address: 3120 W. Cary Street, Richmond, Va. Phone: 358-7375 Hours: Café daily, 7-11 a.m.; Lunch daily 11:30 a.m.- 3 p.m.; Dinner daily from 5 -10 p.m.; Brunch Saturday 8-10 a.m., Sunday 9 a.m.-3 p.m.; Bar open Sunday-Thursday until 1 a.m., Friday and Saturday until 2 a.m. Prices: $$$ Website: www.cancanbrasserie.com

Can Can, a lavishly authentic French bistro in Carytown, has proven it can create the buzz and pack the house. Ever since it opened in late January, the nighttime crowds have been two and three deep at the bar and getting a table in the 140-seat dining room may require considerable planning.

Now the hard work begins--proving it can consistently deliver food and service to match the money and expectations that owner-chef Christopher J. Ripp has invested on 10,000 square feet of space in the renovated Cary Court shopping center.

After half a dozen visits, the jury is still out on accomplishing those goals. The food has ranged from excellent to okay, the service from professional to spotty and the overall experience from exhilarating to frustrating.

Once those glitches are fixed, Can Can is likely to take its place as one of, if not the, most talked-about dining destinations in the metropolitan area.

Ripp, who grew up in the restaurant business (his father and business partner owns 16 Arby’s in the Richmond area), spared little expense in creating the look of a early 20th century Parisian bistro and in assembling a widely-traveled professional staff with enough degrees to open a branch of the Culinary Institute of America.

Can Can offers a variety of dishes and prices for every appetite and wallet. Dinner entrees range from $18 to $22, appetizers from $7 to $12. Be forewarned, however, that Ripp has made few concessions on the menu to non-Francophiles, although you can always get a burger or steak.

The menu is heavy on fish, but meat eaters can’t go wrong with the “steak frites” in butter, red wine, shallots and brandy peppercorn. Other meat and fowl choices include a hanger steak, honey spiced duck breast, mustard-crusted rabbit and pan-roasted chicken.

But you’ll be making a mistake if you don’t venture toward the real French items on the expansive menu.

Some dishes are so authentically French that their taste may not be what you expected. The quiche Lorraine, for example, contains no cheese, but instead is an airy bacon-flavored custard in a flaky crust.

Lunch features such French classics at croque monsieur, a plate-filling ham and cheese sandwich in which the smoked gruyere spills over the crust of a bread so thick that a steak knife would have been useful to cut it.

A memorable dish, available like many at both lunch and dinner, is “moules frites,” mussels in a broth with sausage, potatoes and spinach, with a side of fries. It comes in two sizes, with about one or two dozen mussels.

The fries, by the way, are among the best in town, worthy of ordering as a starter or side dish.

Each night features a special dinner: Monday is veal stew; Tuesday, skate; Wednesday, rack of lamb; Thursday, veal shanks; Friday, beef cheeks; Saturday, lobster, and Sunday, cod.

Among the permanent entrees, the salmon, sitting on a bed of lentils, wild mushrooms and red wine shallots, was roasted perfectly to acquire a crusty skin while preserving the flaky meat; the flavor of sole, which was seasoned, floured and fried in butter, was enhanced with lemon, capers and parsley potatoes, and cod was accompanied by small shell fish, potatoes and an herb broth.

An oyster bar offers shellfish by the piece or platter, and for $75 you can dive into a “grand plateau” of a whole lobster, 16 oysters, 8 shrimp and 8 clams, a dozen mussels and seasonal crab.

All meals start with a basket of bread baked early each day by master baker Phil Hodel.

Can Can opens early and morning regulars have come to enjoy sitting by the front windows and munching croissants, beignets, tarts and other pastries just baked by pastry chef Cornelia Moriconi or crepes, quiche, omelets and even cereal.

Can Can doesn’t pretend to offer “fine” dining, where patrons linger over candlelight for three-hour repasts. Instead it seeks to be a noisy, bright, fast-paced and somewhat smoky neighborhood hangout populated by patrons who come as much to see and be seen as to be wined and dined.

You can almost see Toulouse-Lautrec, sitting at the end of the 50-foot zinc bar, tapping his foot to the dance music and sketching the beautiful people.