There is one quietly and consistently excellent restaurant in Pittsburgh that has been earning the regard of Pittsburgh diners since 1982, changing all the while to suit the times and public tastes: Le Pommier. If you take the restaurant for granted now, lucky you: Le Pommier will exceed your expectations.

	Mark Collins, executive chef at Le Pommier on the South Side, holds a plate of sauteed shrimp and scallops on rosemary-lemon zest risotto cake with Roquefort sauce and pine nuts. (Tony Tye, Post-Gazette)

The delight of the restaurant is the marriage of fancy and familiar. The restaurant's French character is homelike, not humble -- but there's no arguing that it is a pretty restaurant, from its classy brick and wrought iron facade and shiny bistro windows, to its cozy little bar, dressed in velvety tones.

The restaurant's downstairs has been stylishly remade, and the flavor of the place is now more Paris than Provence. Tablecloths striped in sunny colors and flecked with buds are gone, replaced with white linens. The long back wall of the front room is now crimson; it reflects and expands in the low mirror that stretches along the back of the banquette. Tabletops are brightened by a bud vase of fresh blooms and distinguished by attractive tableware, white with a blue bistro band, bearing the "LeP" insignia.

In the summer, the restaurant moves little tables onto the deep East Carson Street sidewalk, where diners, seated behind a waist-high iron grill, can taste the energy of South Side street scene, or pretend they are on the streets of St. Germain-de-Pres, with a little more leg room.

Le Pommier owner Christine Dauber has a canny talent for absorbing and translating to a Pittsburgh audience those things the French understand like no other culture: manners, breeding, charm, taste. Her front-of-the-house staff's knowledge of wines and the menu -- flavors to ingredients -- is deep. Under manager Jeremy Carlisle, the service is agreeable, with a bit of starch to it, the servers attractive and attentive. One nitpick: Our tidy bus girl never once smiled or acknowledged us.

		LE POMMIER 2104 E. Carson St. South Side 412-431-1901 www.Lepommier.com Hours: Monday to Saturday, 5:30 p.m. to close. Closed Sundays. The restaurant is no longer open for lunch. Basics: Reservations recommended. Handicap accessible, valet parking, all major credit cards accepted. Smoking at bar only. Price range: appetizers $8.50 to $15; salads $5 to $6.50; entrees $19 to $30; cheese plate $8.50; desserts $5 to $6.50.

The restaurant is influenced by Dauber's yearly visits to France. She forged her attraction to the culture when she attended cooking school there, at La Varenne, decades ago. The menu, in the hands of chef Mark Collins, values simple preparations of fine ingredients over haute cuisine. Forget your trepidations about the heavy sauces, ambitious fusion and smoke-and-mirrors preparation of some French fare. Le Pommier's kitchen specializes in everyday French food: fresh, good and sure.

Chef Collins shows mastery of a cuisine is noted for subtlety and precision. Yet he makes his own mark. His regional fixed-price menus have featured the cuisines of Gascony, Savoie, Martinique and Tahiti. Nicoise flavors of bitter orange, fennel and rosemary sneak into many dishes. French colonial influences show in a Moroccan-influenced and vegan-friendly dish of seitan, chickpeas, eggplant and plantains served over couscous.

Classic dishes -- roasted meats, sauteed fish, chicken fricassee -- reveal the magic of elegant ingredients. Staid, you may say, when confronted with a menu bearing grilled beef filet and snapper with tarragon. But Collins coaxes the classics to life.

The meal begins with a ramekin of briny Kalamata olives and a pat of sweet butter, to eat with excellent rounds of crusty, warm bread served hot in a covered basket.

For starters, mousse a trois -- a creamy salmon emulsion, hearty chicken liver pate and a earthy mushroom mousse -- was divine, smeared on crostini or sucked from the tip of a finger. The crepe appetizer is a tulip-shaped cup, crisped and filled with custard, not a rolled pancake. A lump crab and herbed ricotta version had a small, milky simplicity.

An excellently firm slice of foie gras, flavored by a quick sear, its middle a melting richness, was sauced with white port and kumquats, which lent a fleeting bite of citrus to a gentle wash of white port. Homemade zucchini bread, with a pleasing custardy, cornbread texture more akin to a stewed pear than firm toasted brioche, cradled the whole.

Salads are aromatic and textural. Plain salade vert is a mix of greens to contrast the color, feathery mouthfeel and flavor of the shoots. Haricots verts, topped with a flavorful triumvirate of vinegary, nutty and creamy -- diced beets, toasted walnuts and chevre -- pop in the mouth. Salade au epinard, baby spinach with blood orange segments and hazelnuts, has tang, crunch and an edge of iron.

For entrees, or plats principaux, a simple approach and wholesome instincts produce a worthy product.

Bouillabaisse, a special, was mild, its broth spiked with the faint smarting acidity of tomatoes. It teemed with good seafood: ladylike and plumply delicate langoustines, dense and velvety scallops, flaky whitefish and pudgy-sweet shrimp.

Duck breast was robed in a rich porcini and roasted garlic jus. A crisped flap of peppery skin capped tender, buttery meat. In the dish dubbed Mer/Foret, large and pristine shrimp and scallops rest against a cake of rosemary lemon risotto, in a luxurious but not over-rich Roquefort sauce. Toasted pine nuts, scattered over the plate, lend crunch.

One disappointment: Roast pork loin, flavored with thyme, sliced and laid on a bed of fresh pappardelle, was a hearty idea that didn't satisfy in execution. The pasta soaked up the juices and moist-but-inexpressive stew of sausage, fennel and tomato, leaving an overall impression of blandness. I was forced to perform the unthinkable: I salted.

Pastry chef Richard Bjork's plain and perfect desserts want only to please. He puts out a perfect creme brulee, but I was lured over to the frozen lemon souffle, and I may never return. Every icy, airy bite melts in the mouth, releasing alternating impressions of lemony tartness and the soft lactic gentility of cream.

There's little in the world that's as good as homemade vanilla ice cream, flecked with pungent bean, except when it fills a profiterole -- encased in a little pastry puff, drizzled with warm, bittersweet chocolate and sprinkled with pistachios. Grapefruit segments, pink in a pale pool of Grand Marnier sabayon, is one of the world's great desserts. Both creamy and astringent, fruity and sour, I wanted to lick the plate.

Le Pommier serves a great cappuccino. It's equally hard to resist something from the selection of digestifs, cognacs and ports. To start, try a cocktail: the soft yet bracing pear fizz, a heady fusion of pear brandy and sparkling wine, or the original Metro martini, a beguiling mixture of southern French flavors, orange juice and Pernod.

Le Pommier is a fine place to experience good wines for a reasonable price. We sipped a "La Violette" viognier by Jean-Luc Colombo ($30) that tasted of peaches and pears, soft and full once it warmed a bit. Chateau Coupe-Roses, a full Rhone red from Minervois, was a very-berry syrah-like wines with a little heat to it, from Languedoc ($38).

Gourmet named Le Pommier a neighborhood gem in their September 2003 pullout guide, and you're a lucky person if this is your neighborhood eatery. It is acceptable -- welcomed, actually -- to be the sort of diner who just wants salad, a glass of wine, and a dessert here.

Le Pommier is one of Pittsburgh's finest, merriest and most original restaurants. Dauber's labor of love has become a place of good memories year after year. Le Pommier accomplishes a rare thing: It provides Pittsburgh diners with the possibility of a transcendental dining experience, one in which, at the end of your great meal, you feel slightly changed.

Such is the magic of fine dining.