By Dave Faries

Staff Writer

What led to the demise of last year's French-Japanese version of Le Club Fakhreldine, so well received by local critics at the time, and its reopening this May as a French-Lebanese restaurant? That would have been the point of departure for this review, were it not for a topic of greater interest.

To wit: Why must so many dishes served in Prague restaurants bathe in raw sodium before reaching the table? Is life so brutish, nasty and short that some misguided folks wish to induce an early heart attack through salt?

What prompted this train of thought was Le Club's kharouf mahshi, an entrée portion of lamb filets shaped into almost perfect ovals, flaky yet quite dry, whetted by a "special sauce" suspiciously similar to something from an Herb Ox container.

It would be cheaper, in this particular case, to purchase bouillon cubes at Albert and suck on one until it dissolved. Same flavor, pretty much.

To start my first visit, I ordered arayes. The menu description — grilled pastry stuffed with lamb and onions — fails to capture the allure of prosaic flat bread (think tortilla) covering what can best be described as processed lamb loaf, pressed almost flat. If any dish creates nostalgia for those glorious days of the frozen minute steak, this would be the one. Only by dousing the "pastry" with olive oil are you able to coax buried flavors from their graves, and then only one: a faint whimper of something vaguely minty. Muhammara, a mound of crushed nuts rolled in a homemade "spicy sauce," followed. The sauce very quickly subdues gentle flavors of whatever nut was crushed — you can't tell — except for residual bitterness, presumably bits of shell or skin. Softer, fruitier elements, such as lemon or pomegranate or anything else common to muhammara, don't exist here.

On my second visit, I chose from the French part of Le Club's menu. Where the Lebanese half had provided a taste of evaporated seawater, these dishes proved farcical, like the product of some culinary Inspector Clouseau. Bread arrived at the table without butter. A selection of "fine French cheeses" included mozzarella and Parmesan.

The bouillabaisse toyed cunningly with two comic genres, slapstick and dark humor. It's hard to say which form better describes a simple stock the color and consistency of water scooped from a river — in other words, pale amber with small bits of debris suspended throughout. In this stagnant pool rested a couple of dull mussels, chunks of very fishy salmon and two "prawns." Anyone familiar with restaurant jargon understands that prawn is generally a lame code word for large shrimp, although Le Club's facsimiles were hardly large.

Semantics is hardly the problem, though. Or maybe it's the very nub. Throwing in shellfish or salmon is fine. But bouillabaisse should be a hearty, rustic dish. Common elements include tomato, fennel, saffron, olive oil (it is, after all, a Provencal recipe). Some add crisp ingredients, such as white and orange peel. And then there are recipes calling for potatoes or even a splash of Pernod. Most of all there should be tomatoes, stewed into a thick and wonderful mess, replete with herbs and fish.

It's almost as if the chef started on the bouillabaisse recipe with the stock, then forget to flip the pages to everything else.

Only the duck breast escapes comic treatment. It's an even-tempered bird; though perfectly cooked, the meat lacks wild, gamey flavors, leaving it ill-prepared to fend off the robust advances of an earthy, saucy fig reduction. The duck blends into the background, a cipher to the sticky condiment. Better meat would help, or preparing a sauce meek enough to allow the bird's raisin-and-apple stuffing to express itself.

In fairness, I should mention the presentation: a fan of sliced duck, wine-dark sauce under a crown of strawberries, a contrasting feather of artfully arranged apple slices set on a pale yellow string of new potatoes. Gorgeous to look at, slightly less so to eat.

In the end, this reincarnation of Le Club leaves a hollow impression. If the French-Japanese combination seemed far-fetched, the substitution of low-end Lebanese turns out to be even more of a stretch. And all that salt ... is it any wonder Czechs pound down more beer than any other culture?

That's another question, though.