Great Expectations

** 1/2 Westend Bistro by Eric Ripert

1190 22nd St. NW

202-974-4900 www.westendbistrodc.com

Open: lunch Monday through Friday 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.; dinner Sunday through Thursday 5:30 to 10 p.m., Friday and Saturday 5:30 to 11 p.m.

All major credit cards. No smoking. Metro: Foggy Bottom. Valet parking for dinner. Prices: lunch entrees $14 to $24, dinner entrees $18 to $34.

You don't buy a Donna Karan frock thinking the designer cut the cloth herself, or a Sean John suit because you imagine Sean "Diddy" Combs personally stitched it up. So why should it be any different with restaurants? Perhaps because food is such an intimate part of our lives, a lot of diners want to imagine that the chefs whose names appear on their menus are right there in the kitchen, hovering over the risotto or reducing the wine sauce.

There are notable exceptions; I doubt anyone walking into a Wolfgang Puck Express expects to see the grinning Austrian tossing pizzas there. At the very least, however, some diners hope to find some fairy dust sprinkled over the brand-name establishments they patronize.

The celebrity chef linked to the new eatery in the West End's Ritz-Carlton is Eric Ripert, 42, the force behind Le Bernardin in Manhattan, one of the finest seafood restaurants in the country. While the French native had a say in what the menu would look like and who would execute the concept -- Leonardo Marino, one of his sous-chefs -- Ripert never pledged that he would spend much time at the restaurant that bears his name. For better or worse, the fate of the Washington outpost would rest solely on the shoulders of his underling, who recently turned 30.

Shortly after the restaurant opened last November, more than a few passionate diners let me know that they wanted to like it more than they did. The menu was too ordinary, some griped. The food was just okay, others complained. My hunch is that those early patrons would have enjoyed their meals more had Westend Bistro not been followed with "by Eric Ripert."

I found a lot of the cooking good right off the bat, but there were a few head-scratchers in the mix. Chicken noodle soup with its tiny pasta in alphabet shapes was at once elegant and playful, something you dream about when you're home in bed with the sniffles. Chesapeake Bay stew brimmed with choice bites of fish (wild striped bass most recently) in a saffron-perfumed broth, its bowl decked out with a shard of toasted bread slathered with a rouille that summoned Provence. But pasta bolognese showed off as much salt as tomato, and warm chocolate cake was no better (or worse) than the dozens of half-baked confections I've sampled over the years.

In the bistro's first month, I could argue its pros and cons, sometimes at the same meal. There are moments when I still can. But lately this is a restaurant that takes a simple idea and renders it special.

The Eastern Market salad is not your garden variety of greens, but rather a lovely toss of crisp green beans, bell peppers, carrots and avocado whose pitch-perfect truffle vinaigrette emphasizes the individual flavors of the vegetables. I can only imagine what it will taste like come summer. Moving up the scale of decadence, there's p¿t¿ en croute, an enlightened version of that old-fashioned dish of pastry-wrapped meat, made here with ground chicken livers, pork shoulder and a shot of cognac. A little pot of Dijon mustard and house-made pickles underscore the pleasure.