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"Brasserie Les Halles, like its Chef-at-Large, Anthony Bourdain, has a certain ill-mannered charm. The restaurant reminds me of the grubby spots I used to visit in Paris, the ones that titillated me because they appeared to be in violation of health codes.\n\nBourdain, yet another chef who hates the drudgery of preparing food, recently went back to the restaurant to play line cook. You might have seen him last night on No Reservations, the Travel Channel show where he slouches, smirks, drinks, smokes, swears, pontificates, and eats bugs (possibly the attributes of a modern Renaissance man). Although he claimed on the program that &amp;quot;the cooking life has been a long love affair,&amp;quot; he also pointed out that it had been eight years since he had worked in a kitchen.\n\nWhen I phoned the restaurant to ask his role there, I was told he acts as a &amp;quot;consultant,&amp;quot; although it&amp;#39;s hard to know what a place that specializes in the hoariest of French dishes would need from an American who wasn&amp;#39;t much of a chef back in the days when he worked at being one. I visited Les Halles on Park Avenue this past weekend and found the butter and the fries quite good. Perhaps churning and frying are Bourdain&amp;#39;s culinary specialties these days.\n\nI had planned to go twice, but once was enough. I entered and was led to a miniscule table covered in white paper. It was in front of a banquette that appeared to have been slashed, probably by an understandably dissatisfied customer. The lighting is so dim and the furnishings so battered that it was difficult to accurately assess the damage.\n\nNext to the table was a marginally better one, and my guest and I asked to be seated there. The surly hostess, who had heretofore said nothing, snarled &amp;quot;no,&amp;quot; and when I pressed for an explanation, she said it had been reserved. I was suspicious, since it&amp;#39;s hard to imagine anyone going to the trouble to reserve a specific table at a restaurant where none are desirable. It was a falsehood easily exposed. When we asked the people finally seated there if they had indeed reserved it, they told us that they had just wandered in, having no idea where they might be placed.\n\nWe ordered wine and our waiter, much friendlier than the hostess, brought the incorrect vintage. We substituted another, which arrived warm to the touch, and he promised us an ice bucket that never materialized. We gamely pressed on, ordering three appetizers, two main courses, and three desserts.\n\nThe first, a flavorless and fatty house terrine, tasted like truck-stop cuisine, but in retrospect we regretted discarding it, because it was markedly superior to a crab cake that was mostly breading and spongy escargots acrid from undercooked garlic. Steak au poivre, although properly cooked, was another variation on the theme of acridity.\n\nThe duck confit looked reasonably attractive. The waiter assured us it was made on the premises, but he was the same fellow who had misled us about the wine bucket (not to be confused with the hostess who had lied about the table). Regardless, the duck leg wasn&amp;#39;t any tastier than those that come from a can. The so-called &amp;quot;truffled potatoes&amp;quot; accompanying it were greasy diced spuds.\n\nDesserts were an improvement, which I attribute to Bourdain not being the Pastry Chef-at-Large. Profiteroles came with good ice cream and even better chocolate sauce, but the choux pastry was inedible\u2014cold, soggy, and undercooked. The cr\u00E8me brl\u00E9e would have been fine had it been freshly made, while the cr\u00EApes suzette, prepared tableside, were at least done earnestly. The gentleman pressed into service had good intentions, but no idea how to make this classic French dessert. He worked hard, used too much of everything, and presented us with mushy cr\u00EApes drowned miserably in an alcoholic, orange-flavored bath.\n\nLast night&amp;#39;s episode of No Reservations might inadvertently have provided an explanation of why the food at Les Halles is so dreadful. The number of tables has almost doubled since Bourdain worked there, and the kitchen is feeding more than 600 people a day.\n\nWhat&amp;#39;s more appalling than the food or even the absurd title of Chef-at-Large is that the smirking Bourdain has somehow become the de facto public face of the restaurant industry. It&amp;#39;s as if Steven Seagal had been named president of the Screen Actors Guild.\n\n411 Park Avenue South; 212-679-4111; www.leshalles.net"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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