Brasseries need not be brew pubs (the French verb brasser means "to brew"), but they are almost always casual, boisterous rooms serving French com fort foods.

Barsac Brasserie is different. It's a spare, elegant place done in muted blacks and whites, though the open kitchen and industrial-type ceiling do lend some casualness to the proceedings. I wouldn't call its dishes comfort foods, either. They're creative combinations and mostly just plain terrific.

You might not expect this at the start. When you are seated, you are served a glass bowl filled with Elks Club-type crudites: iced celery sticks, carrot sticks, radishes and canned black olives. This I don't get at all, since Barsac's chef, Didier Poirier, is obviously such a serious talent.

Poirier can really cook. He's a young, handsome Frenchman with such top-drawer places as Citrus and Patina in his resume, but he's also someone capable of roasting a chicken plain and making it great.

He performed this feat for my 6-year-old nephew, who had looked askance at the whole idea of dining in an atmosphere of hushed tones and semi-darkness. "I don't want any of the juice from the chicken to touch my mashed potatoes," he said as the waiter brought the plate over.

Poirier's roast chicken, golden brown with a light sauce naturel underneath, doesn't look quite like mom's roast chicken, and his garlic mashed potatoes are definitely more of a puree than most American kids are used to. But my nephew tasted them, and soon he was mopping up the sauce and potatoes like a hungry kitten.

I don't mean to imply that this is a kid's restaurant. In fact, most of these dishes are very, very grown up. Surely few 6-year-olds would go near the roasted potato shells with two caviars and sour cream. These are sculpted new potatoes done with flashy orange and black . . . well, they're fish eggs, kid.

Another appetizer, goat cheese and arugula salad, turns out to be little brioche points topped with goat cheese mousse and one arugula leaf, arranged pyramid fashion (this pyramid stuff is getting out of hand) with good marinated yellow peppers and homemade potato chips.

And I love the spinach salad, too, though I wouldn't have eaten spinach at age 6 even if my parents had promised me a new bicycle. Poirier's version is ultra-rich, thanks to a creamy dressing, a small fortune in tiny, deliciously poached Louisiana rock shrimp and plenty of a sweet pungent red onion confit mixed throughout.