By Tom Sietsema Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, December 17, 2000 William Walden spent nine years playing second fiddle at L'Auberge Chez Francois in Great Falls, under maestro Francois Haeringer. A year ago, the former sous-chef returned to his home town of Lovettsville and opened a place of his own. Borrowing the nickname given to him by his grandmother, Walden called it Billy Joe's. Big mistake. "People expected barbecue and coleslaw," the chef says, yet he was serving the kind of classic French cooking he had been schooled in for almost a decade. "It was not good for business." Within weeks of opening, calls to the restaurant were met by a voice introducing patrons instead to La Fleur de Lis. Same food, different billing. If there remained any confusion, the sight of champagne flutes on the tables and framed French art posters on the walls reinforced the kitchen's accent. French cooking in the Virginia countryside has a nice ring to it, but don't pull out a map just yet. La Fleur de Lis isn't the warm and fuzzy country destination of your food fantasies, though it could be a pleasant place to find yourself on a cold winter night, surrounded by friends or family. (The restaurant, 14 miles northwest of Leesburg, is about an hour's drive from downtown Washington.) The twinkling white lights that trim the restaurant's facade, and the roseate dining room with window fabrics that pay homage to Laura Ashley, set you up for a cozy evening -- as does a steaming glass of cinnamon- and nutmeg-laced red wine, beefed up with a shot of cognac. So why doesn't the hostess play along? She oversees her domain with all the good cheer of an automaton, looking up and away from guests when she talks to them, and directing her staff as if they were students in a school play who hadn't learned their lines. A tight smile adds to the chill. Fortunately, madame's quirks haven't rubbed off on the rest of the dining room crew, which is a generally gracious, if not always diligent, bunch. A request for more bread to sop up the last of a haunting mushroom soup might be forgotten, and a glass of Perrier might get topped off with tap water. Ah, but it's the holiday season. There's classical music to serenade you and delightful aromas to guide you around the menu. The occasional lag between courses gives old friends time to catch up. The first spoonful of French onion soup is encouraging; threads of onion sweeten a broth that is deeply flavored with both beef and chicken stock. And my friends and I are glad to have been steered to the appetizer special, disks of savory pastry arranged with warm Roquefort cheese and gently crisp apple slices. Specials seem to be the path of choice, whether in an opener of tender, meaty frog's legs moistened with garlic-and-parsley sauce (and thoughtfully presented with a finger bowl), or a main course that combines crab and Maine lobster, nicely offsetting the intense richness of the seafood with a beurre blanc sharpened with lemon and capers. Worth the trip. So, too, is Walden's fine rack of lamb, edged with herbs and garlic and accompanied by roast potatoes, carefully turned vegetables and a sauceboat of lamb juice. But the choucroute! Oh, it looks enticing, that rib-sticking, Alsatian-inspired platter of duck, pheasant, boudin blanc and more, all bedded on sauerkraut. But twice when I ordered it, the meats were dry and overcooked, the sausage spongy, the cabbage lacking the winy notes it should have had. A waiter showed up with a few lifesavers, in the form of mustard and horseradish, but condiments can't save a dish that's DOA. Boeuf bourguignon, a special, suffered from a poor translation, too. The beef, chopped into oddly big pieces, had little flavor, and the promised "buttered noodles" turned out to be angel hair pasta -- way too delicate for a dish like this. Weird. If not for the vegetables that come with it -- browned pearl onions, sweet carrots, delicate haricots verts -- anyone who ordered it would have left hungry. At the beginning of the meal, your server will ask if you'd like to order a souffle for dessert. If its description includes a splash of Grand Marnier, just say oui. Tall and airy and warm and trembling, the souffle whispers seductively of its liqueur. The server will split it open at the table, releasing a puff of steam, and spoon a rich dollop of creme anglaise into its center. (The mixed-berry souffle proves less enchanting.) Another crowd-pleaser is the caky apple tart with a glossy sauce that straddles caramel and butterscotch. La Fleur de Lis appears to be an all-purpose dining destination. Surveying the dining room on a given night, you'll spot people doing business in one corner, a twosome toasting a special date with champagne in another. Other diners look as if they just showed up for a good meal, and sometimes they get just that.
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