• Cuisine: French bistro
• Occasion: See-and-be-seen dinner, date, group ­dinner
• Don't Miss: Lobster salad, roasted chicken, ­Minetta burger
• Price: Appetizers, $14; entrees, $20; ­dessert, $9
• Reservations: Highly ­recommended
• Phone: (212) 475-3850
• Location: 113 MacDougal St., near ­Minetta Lane.

When did we become so self-conscious about burgers? I'll bet that back in the 1930s, when someone ordered a burger, they ate it and that was the end of it. They didn't photograph it or write home about it.

These days, chefs compete for ­burger bragging rights. They battle over exclusive access to butchers, prized cattle and prime cuts.

Everybody's got a burger these days, but Minetta Tavern's got two — the $16 Minetta burger and the $26 Black Label burger.

For 26 bucks, that had ­better be a good burger. The patty had a nice, crusty exterior, good sesame brioche bun and great bun-to-burger ratio. The kitchen traditionally tops the $16 Minetta burger with cheddar, but we requested no cheese for an impartial side-by-side comparison. It was a heated debate, but my vote went to the Minetta burger. It had more ­flavor, more give, more juice on my chin.

The old Minetta Tavern was a place where Ernest Hemingway, Joseph Mitchell and some of the beat artists drank martinis and ate steaks.

People love to make new restaurants look old, and nobody's better at it than Keith McNally. Take a look at his body of work — Balthazar, Pastis, Lucky Strike and Schiller's Liquor Bar. His palette is oxidized mirrors, rusty brass trimmings and beaten wood floors.

At Minetta, McNally was working with an antique. He restored the original wood bar and yellow tin ceilings and kept the black-and-white photos and murals. ­Other than the velvet rope around the entrance, it feels like you're walking onto the set of a movie taking place in Greenwich ­Village circa 1930. The servers dress in black vests and thin ties. A few nostalgic customers — sporting top hats and curly mustaches — drink Blood & Sand cocktails and eat veal chops.

McNally partnered with his top Balthazar toques — Lee Hanson and Riad Nasr — to design a bistro menu with French classics and period fare, like Tavern steaks, bone-in New York strip, and Grand Marnier soufflé. Begin with a Hemingway Daiquiri or a fabulous Dark & Stormy cocktail, made with a five-spiced infusion, cider, rum and lemon.

The best items on the menu are all Pommes of one sort or another. At my last supper, I'd want one of the side dishes to be the $8 Aligot — a divine purée of melted cheese curd, garlic, cream and velvety potatoes. The dish to order is the Poulet Fermier Rôti — roasted chicken with vegetables — because it's served on an aligot bed and the ­chicken's wonderfully moist. The ­Salade de Homard — a tangy lobster salad with a celeriac remoulade, green beans, chervil and capers — is also delicious.

But there's some dullness  here, too. The grilled dorade was an acceptable piece of fish, but the romesco — a classic red pepper sauce – smelled and tasted musty. The parchment-baked cod with leeks and two lonely cockles was a bore, and, oddly, so was an entrée of overbreaded pig's trotter. For dessert, skip the chalky chocolate soufflé and try the Chocolate ­Dacquoise — a chocolate ganache with an exceptional hazelnut meringue.

How can you manage to be ­nostalgic and of the moment these days? Well, that's ­McNally's forte.

An affordable French ­bistro in Harlem.

308 Lenox Ave., between 125th and 126th Streets
(212) 289-5555
Lunch - 11:30 a.m.-3 p.m., M-F.;
Dinner - 5 p.m.-11 p.m. Sun.-Thur., 5 p.m.- midnight, Fri.-Sat.;
Brunch - 11-3 Sat.-Sun.
CUISINE French bistro
VIBE Charming haunt
OCCASION Group dinner, neighborhood eats
DON'T-MISS DISH Foie gras terrine, tuna tartare, nougat glacé
PRICE Appetizers $8, entrees $16, desserts $7
RESERVATIONS Recommended

This is the way New York works: Something unexpected pops up and it turns out to fill a crying need. In other words, it wasn't so unexpected after all.

I mean, why was I surprised to find a good French bistro at 125th St. and Lenox Ave. —and surprised to find it jammed on a Friday night, so jammed you couldn't make your way to the bar? The city is full of unexpected restaurants that have become neighborhood fixtures. It's worked that way everywhere — Queens, SoHo, Tribeca, the lower East Side, Carroll Gardens and Flatbush.

If you watch the faces coming into Chez Lucienne in Harlem, you see a look of surprise over and over again. It's also a sense of déjà vu — the feeling that you've just stumbled into a place where you want to order a drink and look at the menu. French music, French accents — not the Inspector Clouseau type — bow ties, homemade terrines and honest bistro prices.

Chez Lucienne is a place that's meant to be affordable. Pâté, six dollars.
House-smoked salmon, nine. Skirt steak entree, 16. What's the catch? There's only one. Silly drinks — the Moulin Rouge, the Blue Ocean, the White Cosmo and the Rose Martini.

They're pushing the house cocktails and they're not worth drinking. Besides, it's a French bistro, so order wine. The lineage behind Chez Lucienne is ­pretty distinguished. Owner Jerome Bougherdani worked at Le Bernardin and ­Daniel. He fell in love with Harlem 15 years ago. The chef, Thomas Obaton, is from Lyon, France, and cooked with Guy Savoy in Paris. He's serving really simple ­bistro classics — chicken fricassee, salade nicoise and a foie gras terrine.

And it's the simple things that work best here. How do you know what isn't simple? It's drowning in sauce. That includes the beef bourguignon, the fricassee in chasseur sauce, and the scallops in an orange reduction sauce. So what does that leave you with?  Lots.

One of my favorites is the sautéed skirt steak. At Chez Lucienne, the skirt steak has a texture more like filet mignon, but with all the skirt steak's ­flavor. And the foie gras ­terrine was as good as a foie gras terrine should be. What made it ­special were the accompanying ­Anjou pears, steeped in red wine. They enliven the seriousness of the foie gras itself.

On this mostly French menu, there are a few immigrants, like the tuna tartare.
Listen to this list of ingredients: wasabi-spiked caviar, cucumber, red pepper puree, and parmesan cheese crisps. How are they supposed to get along? This is one of the dishes that give you a glimpse into the way a creative chef thinks. He finds a kind of taste-logic where you wouldn't think it exists. This is also the kind of appetizer that makes the $15 Burger du Chef and the leek and potato soup taste drab.

Chez Lucienne is a ­really good find. And chef ­Obaton is asking to be taken seriously. So let's.

Is this the best restaurant it could be? Not yet. Maybe it's trying too hard to be a classic French bistro. Maybe the chef needs to follow the lead of the tuna tartare, which has nothing to do with France. But wherever Obaton takes the menu, it will be interesting to watch.