Let's Do 'Luncheon'

"Cooking bones for 36 hours? Dangerous for bacteria," Ruiter said. Sanitary rules also forbid the restaurant to cook steaks in the style devoured by members of the boating party: a quick sear on the fire, then 24 hours packed in straw in a wooden box -- unrefrigerated.

The sweet freshwater fish and eels once plucked from the Seine are no longer available and "crayfish are too expensive," according to Ruiter.

The sole surviving menu item from the era of the impressionists is Terrine de Lapin Selon la Mere Fournaise , a rabbit pâté prepared according to the style of Madame Fournaise, the original owner's wife and chief cook. Well, almost. Current health laws require that it be cooked more thoroughly than Madame Fournaise ever would have.

Even so, it stands out as one of the tastiest items on the menu that includes escargot in a fluffy puff pastry and strips of whitefish floating in a saffron sauce covered by a paper-thin crisp shaped like a tent as well as dishes of lamb and duck and calves' brains.

"A palette of impressionist sorbets" -- three scoops arranged on a crunchy pastry sheet reminiscent of an artist's palette -- is one of the dessert offerings.

The Fournaise family closed the restaurant in 1906. The building fell into decay and served for several decades as a shabby apartment complex for 13 families. In 1979 it was saved from demolition in a campaign by the town of Chatou to raise money for its restoration.

Ruiter said the restaurant remains off the path of most American tourists, but European and Japanese tourists -- often toting books of Renoir artwork -- flock to its terraces and patios, which blossom with colorful umbrellas and awnings in the summer.

He describes his 21st-century clientele as "a mixture of everything -- people who are hungry and people who like to smell the inspiration of Renoir."

For information on the restaurant, exhibitions in its adjacent art gallery and nearby rambles where impressionists set up their easels, seehttp://www.restaurant-fournaise.fr.

"Luncheon of the Boating Party" will be available for public viewing starting Saturday at the Phillips Collection, 1600 21st St. NW. Admission will be free on Saturday and Sunday.

Molly Moore is The Post's correspondent in Paris.