VIVE LE FRENCH : Food That Is Sexy but Not Exotic, Light but Full of Flavor. At Long Last, Amour!

Tomato-red awnings and a row of potted ficus-type trees out front signal the location of La Cachette. At this lighthearted new French restaurant, the food is so good that the room has been booked solid almost every night.

After a decade at l’Orangerie and a brief stint at Cicada, Jean-Francois Meteigner is finally cooking at his own place. He and co-owner Liza Utter have transformed the former Champagne Bis into a bright, airy hideaway decked out in pale woods and cream-colored banquettes. The lighting is soft, the linens crisp. It’s quiet enough for intimatke conversation but doesn’t feel a bit stuffy. La Cachette is, in short, a very grown-up restaurant.

Meteigner has an unerring sense of what Angelenos long to eat: light, natural cuisine that’s full of flavor. His food is sexy without being exotic, and his ideas aren’t complicated. The difference is that this French-trained chef can cook. Meteigner may be only in his late 30s, but he’s been honing his craft since he was 15.

Some of his dishes are so delicious you want to order them again and again. Like the Provencal tart of puff pastry, topped with tapenade, organic tomatoes and basil and finished with a drizzle of olive oil infused with garlic, chile pepper and parsley. Meaty Portobello mushroom caps, roasted to intensify their woodsy flavor, are a revelation. Meteigner’s concentrated lobster and crab bisque had me floating raft after raft of toasted bread smeared with garlickly rouille in the rust-colored soup until I had soaked up the last drop. And if you’re ready to fling calorie-counting to the winds for the night, order his terrine of foie gras when it’s a special . The classic, smooth pink duck liver, marbled with buttery yellow fat, is absolutely wonderful.

He has a warm Maine lobster salad tossed with slender haricots verts , frisee and asparagus and lightly perfumed with white truffle oil. And he serves an enticing house-smoked whitefish salad with warm potatoes doused in lemon and capers.

Utter, who runs the front of the house and is Meteigner’s biggest fan, stops by to give an enthusiastic rundown of the menu. Of the grilled swordfish with wasabe , she says, “People would drive miles out of their way to eat this dish.” She may be right. The thick slices of juicy swordfish garnished with crunchy caviar wasabe and a dash of pugnacious wasabe- mustard sauce definitely warrants a detour. And I love what he does with salmon, serving it as thick, seared “chops” alongside caramelized pearl onions and mushrooms steeped in a deep, dark Cabernet pepper sauce.

Meteigner is just as much in command with meat and poultry. His rotisserie lamb basted with tapenade and mustard is a knockout, the juicy meat served over pale green flageolets. And that old bistro standby, steak- frites , is exemplary, tender and flavorful rib-eye cloaked in a beautifully balanced pepper-Roquefort sauce.

No wonder La Cachette feels like a gift. We’re not used to getting such consistently competent cooking at these prices. (None of the entrees is more than $20; prices dip even lower at lunch.) The service, however, is still a bit rough around the edges.

Meteigner misses the mark with a few dishes, too. The picture-perfect duck terrine has no flavor. The handsome, hand-chopped steak tartare is watery. The elements of the cassoulet--beans, sausage and various meats--taste as if they’ve just met, instead of having simmered together for hours. And the three big turkey-and-chicken sausages, draped with onion rings and tart slices of apple, are too refined, as finely ground as bratwurst.

Utter materializes to tout the desserts. And they deserve it. First, if it’s on the menu that night, secure a slice of the tarte tatin , which is hands-down the best in town. Meteigner, who won Lunaria’s recent tarte tatin competition in L.A., has got just the right balance of tart and sweet. And he serves this puff-pastry creation with a scoop of perfect cream: whipped but not too whipped, chilled but not too chilled. And surely you can wait the 20 minutes it takes to bake the chocolate souffle. Halfway between a souffle and a mousse, this appealing dessert comes like a little hat with a molten center, that same perfect cream on the side. Or settle for the fragile caramelized apple tart with a swirl of razor-thin Golden Delicious apples and a hint of cinnamon. For careful souls, he has a refreshing, low-fat passion-fruit-and-lemon tart.

The wine list includes some well-priced French picks. Muscadet, the crisp, dry wine the French consider the perfect accompaniment to shellfish, makes a rare appearance, a ’90 from one of the area’s best producers, Louis Metaireau ($29). There’s also a sturdy, delicious ’90 Moulin-a-Vent Beaujolais Villages from Domaine Paul Janin ($24.50) and a big, spicy Chateauneuf-du-Pape “La Gardine” ($32) from the same well-regarded vintage. Wine buffs may balk at the $15 corkage fee--until Utter explains that the fee is the same no matter how many bottles of wine you ask her to open. “We’ve had people bring in such great bottles,” she says. “And most offer a sample, so I’ve had the chance to taste some fabulous wine.”

Meteigner’s graceful and intelligent French cooking should appeal to a great many tastes, but I suspect he is capable of much more. I would love to see what he could do if he allowed himself to try one or two more ambitious dishes each night, instead of specials that read like variations on the carefully scripted menu. So far, very good. He can afford to dare a little more.

La Cachette, 10506 Little Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles; (310) 470-4992. Lunch served Tuesday through Friday, dinner Monday through Saturday. Closed Sundays. Beer and wine. Dinner for two, food only, $48-$73. Corkage, $15.