Photo: Erica Gannett

If Target were selling instant restaurants, the result, in looks at least, would be Madame Tartine. A mix of retro, jazz-era Paris tchotchkes and contemporary, Jonathan Adlerish touches is the thing here. It’s so much the thing here that you half expect your server to greet you with jazz hands.

But if you think the decor is generically stylish, wait until you see the food. This is the land of steak frites and frisée salads, wines poured from carafes and ramekins of thick chocolate mousse. When this kind of food is done well, it’s great. But here, even the best dishes had drawbacks. The meat half of steak frites suffered from a lack of seasoning. A nice country salad was flawed with chewy, fatty lardons. Onion soup had a pronounced beefiness to it but was overly salty.

And when things were bad? Watch out. Mushy poached skate wing was suffocated with beurre blanc, giving it the taste and texture of butter-flavored baby food. Duck-confit spring rolls tasted precisely like nothing. The burger was topped with lobster the texture of tires. Crème brûlée was so eggy it should have been saved for breakfast. And those carafes of rosé should be locked up and thrown in vinicultural jail, because this is exactly the stuff that gives pink wine—and, for that matter, American-French bistros—a bad name.