Belle de Jour

When I stumbled on this place with a friend, we loved the the whole image: a quaint French restaurant in an obscure location under the Brooklyn Bridge, with what we romanticized to be the defiant, cigarette-smoking Frenchman with attitude out in front. We did not eat here, but my reading of reviews and their website this morning tells me that this place could be a real find. The chef, Ovidiu Pastae, previously owned Au Coin du Feu ("by the fireplace") in Vence, France, and a SOHO sibling by the same name at 222 Lafayette (now closed). His newest restaurant, Belle de Jour Bistro, opened in April of 2007. It is named after the 1967 French classic film, “Belle de Jour,” directed by Luis Bruneul and starring Catherine Deneuve. The bistro's building, located at 259 Front Street in the South Street Seaport area, was a flour mill built in 1809 and designed by Robert Mills, one of the first professional architects in the United States. Working primarily in the Baltimore-Washington area in the neoclassical style, Mills is most well known for designing the Washington Monument (along with the Department of Treasury and other federal buildings). After locating an article with a photo of Ovidiu, I am now thinking that the man I caught in my photo may be Ovidiu himself?