Anyone who loves France, French cooking and the atmosphere of a French Bistro should head to the corner of Second Avenue and Fifty-Seventh Street. I discovered Les Sans Culottes by accident one evening when I was a friends house guest in New York City for a week of Broadway Theater. Being an expatriate New Yorker after moving to Florida, I had an open invitation to visit, and so I did. We were taking a stroll up Fifty Seventh Street to have dinner and there it was, a bistro-type eatery that looked as if it would be more at home in Greenwich Village rather than the Upper East Side. We were both in the mood for something new, and we decided to try it.
Billed as a revolutionary French restaurant , the name, Les Sans Culottes, references the citizen soldiers of the French Revolution who were fanatical anti-royalists. Meaning without knee breeches, the sans culottes were usually lower class laborers who hated the aristocracy and the culottes they wore. As a born-again liberal, the name may also have attracted me inside to the casual and cozy interior. I was surprised by the low prices of the three-course prix-fixe dinner which came first with a basket of appetizers including sausages, pate, vegetables and dressing that was enough for a normal dinner. I, on the other hand, am not a normal person when it comes to dinner. I eat slowly and a lot, between sips of wine. The entrée choices had several price ranges and included seafood, fowl, beef and lamb, pork and liver. Chocolate mousse or caramel flan were the dessert choices. I was in dinner heaven and have never been back to New York City without having at least one dinner or lunch at Les Sans Culottes.
