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" DESPITE ALL OF ITS DRAWBACKS--most remarkably the inordinate number of recent grads cruising from the home office to the golf course in bad polos and flatu-slacks--there has been one delicious benefit to the e-conomic boom of late: The restaurant business is thriving. And perhaps more exciting than the barrage of the brand-new is the redemption of the classics, which not only tempt the belly but warm the heart. I call your attention to two glowing, if disparate, examples: La Tour d&amp;#039;Argent in Paris and Le Fran\u00E7ais in Wheeling, Illinois. Both storied establishments--one a 200-year-old Paris institution, the other a 27-year-old, internationally celebrated midwestern French anomaly--are set, after a period of poor and neglectful management, to rally to their former glory.  La Tour d&amp;#039;Argent is as much a Paris landmark as the Arc de Triomphe, except that it&amp;#039;s much older. Named after a 12th-century stone tower overlooking the Seine, it was an inn during most of the 17th century. After surviving several owners and a ransacking during the storming of the Bastille (La Tour&amp;#039;s coat of arms looked suspiciously royal), the restaurant was taken over by Frederic Delair, who invented pressed duck (roasted, with a sauce made from its crushed bones and blood) and, in a stroke of early marketing genius, numbered each bird served. That number stands today at around 800,000 and counting. In 1912, Delair sold the restaurant to Andr\u00E9 Terrail, who, with his son Claude, made La Tour d&amp;#039;Argent a requisite stop for international society, winning three Michelin stars as a restaurant &amp;quot;worth a journey.&amp;quot; Claude, who is now 82, loved to associate with the jet set he hosted, and he is said to have romanced many of the beautiful female clientele, Ava Gardner among them.  But while the world&amp;#039;s palate developed, La Tour d&amp;#039;Argent remained static, paying little notice to the changes taking place in French haute cuisine. During the 1970s, it was becoming the kind of place where you might find Merv Griffin and Zsa Zsa Gabor regaling each other over glasses of pink champagne. By 1995, the restaurant had officially become a dinosaur; its fussy antique decor, kitschy marbleized ceiling, and funereal table settings had started to take on an unnerving likeness to certain restaurants in Las Vegas. Finally Michelin took away a star--a demotion many Parisian gourmets said should have occurred years before. Terrail, shaken but not cowed, turned it around last December by hiring young chef Jean-Francois Sicallac, who has brought back La Tour d&amp;#039;Argent&amp;#039;s culinary luster. It is still one of Paris&amp;#039;s most expensive restaurants, but a sumptuous three-course lunch here will run you a reasonable $52, with ten well-priced wine offerings. The wine cellar itself is the stuff of legend--more than half a million bottles, with wines dating back to 1865 and cognacs to 1788, all overseen by an affable Brit named David Ridgway. Sicallac is well aware that La Tour d&amp;#039;Argent&amp;#039;s clientele, as well as his boss, is not about to swear off favorite dishes like the ethereally light quenelles of pike \u00E0 la Andr\u00E9 Terrail, a consummate example of classic haute cuisine at its most heart-stopping, as perfectly rendered as the dimple in Monsieur Terrail&amp;#039;s necktie. But he is also free enough to experiment with a pink, juicy fillet of lamb scented with cumin and accompanied by a confit of citron and a crisp potato cake. If the roast sea bream with a coulis of lobster and homemade noodles is less than thrilling, Sicallac&amp;#039;s piquant-sweet, crisp-skinned duck \u00E0 l&amp;#039;orange, served with bright-green spinach, redeems. Here you will see the real French, complete with a spectacular view of Notre-Dame Cathedral.  YOU&amp;#039;LL BE hard-pressed to find a single Gothic cathedral in the entire American Midwest, never mind in Wheeling, Illinois. Landmarks here, for the most part, include used-car lots and fast-food joints. It was only the eminence of Le Fran\u00E7ais, under chef-owner Jean Banchet, that made it worthwhile for folks like Cary Grant, Jack Nicholson, and Wolfgang Puck to spend a C-note on the round-trip taxi fare from Chicago to the Wheeling wilderness, especially once The New York Times declared it &amp;quot;a miracle in the Midwest&amp;quot; and Bon Appetit called it &amp;quot;the greatest restaurant in America.&amp;quot; And back in 1973, when Banchet opened it, it was. If the decor was a little heavy-handed and the service somewhat ostentatious (swooning captains brandished food on huge Villeroy &amp;amp;amp; Boch china), Banchet&amp;#039;s cooking was sublime, and it brought him fame and enough money to put a Mercedes, a Hummer, and a Ferrari in the garage. But after 15 years of hard work, Banchet leased Le Fran\u00E7ais to Roland and Beth Liccioni, who swore to uphold its reputation and maintain the pomp and ceremony. Banchet moved to Atlanta, lost 50 pounds, and rode his Harley-Davidsons down Peachtree Street for a while, then got restless and opened two successful French restaurants there. After ten years in Atlanta, Banchet returned to Chicago to find that restaurants like Charlie Trotter, Everest, and Spiaggia had outclassed Le Fran\u00E7ais while the Liccionis had put next to nothing back into a dining room whose decor was still stuck in the 1970s. The question had become, Why drive 45 minutes out to Wheeling when you could dine as well or better in town? Answer: Don&amp;#039;t bother. The restaurant suffered. Now Banchet has taken Le Fran\u00E7ais back to his bosom and poured half a million dollars into renovating the dining room, trading dark wood for blond and flat lighting for a roseate glow and placing the kitchen behind a glass window so that guests can watch the bearded Banchet and chef de cuisine David Sanders cook up a storm each night. The results are magnificent, once again lavishly \u00E0 la Banchet, with portions that reflect the midwestern appetite. You might begin with wild pheasant in pastry with silky truffled foie gras sauce, lentil soup with duck confit, or warm lobster salad with mango vinaigrette, then push on through roast saddle of rabbit stuffed with a chanterelle mousse, or seared venison with roasted chestnuts. Desserts range from a crisp, caramelized tarte Tatin to Grand Marnier souffl\u00E9.  So when the stock market dives and sends the on-paper millionaires heading for the hills (and it will), these restaurants will still be around, tributes to the intransient, homages to the comeback kid. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a1145/second-helpings-0600/>