By Paul Reidinger

IF THE MOST overt theme of Jacques Pépin's winning memoir, The Apprentice: My Life in the Kitchen (Houghton Mifflin), is a "coming to America" variant, its most revealing vignettes – about a small boy growing up in French country villages amid the tribulations and ashen aftermath of war – suggest the rootedness of French cooking in the land. Little Jacques, whose mother ran a series of provincial restaurants, was a forager from early on; the usual boyhood expeditions through field and stream resulted in his gathering of snails, trout, herbs, greens, and other delicacies, all of which found its way onto his mother's rustic menus.

There is a romantic, lost-world tinge to all this. Modern urban France, though not as supermarketed as the United States, nonetheless shows signs of shrink-wrapping, and of course the United States, with its Midas touch of commerce, has long led the world in turning all human endeavors into industries. Yet even in this country, the earthiness of a certain style of French restaurant cooking – what Pépin describes as a blend of cuisine bourgeoise and cuisine ménagère – persists in many a French bistro. A recent addition to the lineup of these places is Bistro Clement, an offshoot of Clémentine across the street.

When Clémentine opened more that five years ago as a successor to très haut Alain Rondelli, the boundaries of the food tightened noticeably though not unpleasantly. Rondelli (whose bestowing of his name on his restaurant was an act ahead of its time) was an innovator, a chef who spoke the idiom of California cuisine with a French accent; Clémentine, by contrast, served fairly traditional high-end French food at surprisingly moderate prices. As with négociant wines, you understood that you were getting more than your money's worth.

Still, no matter how attractive the values, few people would care to eat that sort of food every day – it's too rich, for one thing. For everyday food, people go to bistros and eat quiche lorraine and salade niçoise, fish soup and steak frites. Bistro Clement has these standards and more, and it offers them in a handsome storefront dining room I was stunned to find painted in a hue other than butter – an orangeish red, I would say, the color of glowing barbecue coals. It remarkably, and perhaps intentionally, resembles the color of the Cancale-style fish soup ($5).

Cancale is a town in Brittany famed for its oysters, so presumably the soup contains oysters, but because of a thorough pureeing there was no way for us to be quite certain, apart from an unmistakable brininess – but that is a characteristic of virtually all creatures of the deep. The smooth, thick, reddish broth looked tastier than it turned out to be, and if it hadn't been served with a trio of potent addenda – toasted garlic croutons, shredded Jack cheese, and a spicy rouille – it would have been disappointingly dull. But the trio performed the miracle grated Parmesan cheese so often performs in Italian cooking: giving the jolt of life to an apparently moribund dish.

Mussels ($7.25) are pretty much bulletproof, and the less done to them (other than weeding out the duds) the better. At Bistro Clement they are steamed with white wine, which becomes the basis of a garlic-parsley-shallot broth. I have never had a steamed-mussel broth we didn't mop up like fiends with bread once the mussels were gone, and so we did here, agreeing as we did so that we would have preferred a bit more spiciness, vividness, kick in the broth.

Steak is mussel-like in its bulletproofness, asking little from the chef beyond the barest handling – and the company of good frites, of course. Bistro Clement's version is entrecôte ($14.50), a boneless filet sparingly enhanced with a peppercorn-cream sauce that actually makes a nice ketchup substitute for those of us who sometimes feel an irresistible urge to dip our fries in something.

For the most part, the kitchen's eschewing of the fancy serves it well. A pâté du chef ($7.25) is all about the thick slice of pork terrine with its glaze of fat; the cornichons and mixed greens with diced red bell peppers on the side add color, texture, and a bit of acid but otherwise are demure. (But ... no Dijon mustard?) Salade niçoise ($10), served in a deep bowl, features large chunks of grilled fresh ahi (quite preferable to canned tuna), along with a yeoman's array of sliced hard-boiled eggs, quarters of tomato and Yukon Gold potato, julienne bell peppers, and a cache of niçoise olives in the sump of the bowl, where they gather the mild vinaigrette. And quiche lorraine ($7) recombines the ham and cheese of a croque monsieur in an elegant pastry crust.

There is the occasional flourish. Our favorite was the scattering of flash-fried basil leaves accompanying prawns ($14.75). They were like ultra-thin, dark green potato chips – an elegant touch, easily accomplished even at home (all you need is a deep saucepan, well-heated oil, a slotted spoon for scooping, and quick reactions, since flash frying takes 10 seconds at most), and a welcome leavening to the slightly sweet, tomato-rich Provençal sauce elsewhere on the plate.

Tarte tatin in restaurants is almost always disappointing – gummy, runny, tough, thin – but not at Bistro Clement, whose version is not only reasonably priced ($5) but absolutely slathered in rich caramel and enriched by a scoop of vanilla-bean ice cream. I wish I'd ordered it instead of being obliged to raid like a Viking across the table. But I mean no discredit to the marquise au chocolat ($5), a fondant ("melted") that could easily have passed for a chunk of fudge afloat in a pond of crème anglaise. BCBG, and clearly not an apprentice effort.

Bistro Clement. 127 Clement (at Second Ave.), S.F. (415) 387-6966. Lunch: Mon., Wed.-Sat., 11:30 a.m.-2 p.m. Dinner: Wed.-Mon., 5:30-10 p.m. Beer and wine. MasterCard, Visa. Moderately noisy. Wheelchair accessible.