A pleasantly chewy salad combining wild rice and barley is given new richness with the addition of blackberries instead of the more usual seedless grapes.

Starters on the current menu include a salad combining roasted peppers, lamb's tongue and smoked salmon; prosciutto and melon, and a cold minestrone soup.

Engaging starters include grilled portobello mushrooms and arugula; a salad combining shrimp, endive and artichokes dressed in a well-balanced vinaigrette; tuna tartare, and smoked salmon on focaccia with goat cheese.

One of his cultural sleights of hand is a French and Asian salad combining the homey tête de veau pressée (the pickings from a boiled calf's head and trotters pressed into a terrine) with crispy duck tongues.

And who else serves an appetizer of okra and barbecued shrimp, or a salad combining cabbage and apricots?

For starters, there are fava beans braised with pancetta and mushrooms; clams casino; grilled baby eggplant with fresh mint and garlic, and a salad combining blood-orange sections, fennel and passalone olives.

Another arresting light starter is a salad combining shredded duck, crispy rice noodles, tomato and coriander ($8).

The engaging menu offers starters like lobster and tabbouleh with a curry vinaigrette; a salad combining arugula, chanterelles, warm corn, pancetta and goat cheese; and grilled octopus with fennel and potato in a lemony dressing.

A salad combining chicken sausage with watercress, tomato and mushrooms had lots of flavor, but the sausage was raw.

One might begin with Vietnamese spring rolls, sweet cabbage and tomato soup with basil, or a salad combining grilled calamari with romaine, endive and avocado in a chili-peanut vinaigrette.