Dining Guide

When Daniel Pont was the owner, chef and cashier (a culinary one-man band, if you will) of downtown’s wildly popular bistro La Bonne Soupe Café, he shocked the local dining establishment when he earned the single highest food rating in Zagat’s 2009 Sacramento dining guide. Having sold the bistro last year, he’s back in his comfort zone, running his own cozy (nine tables total) white tablecloth restaurant in Folsom, the sixth such boîte he’s owned over his long and fascinating career. Instead of sandwiches, the charming 73-year-old Frenchman is serving up traditional four-course meals that begin with a choice of delicious French Onion soup or a creamy vegetable potage, and a salad, followed by sublime entrées, such as prawns and scallops with lobster cognac sauce or a rack of lamb provençale ($30 includes all four courses). Desserts are French classics like crème brûlée, crème de caramel or cherries jubilee. And he only takes cash on weekends. Oh, and he’s no longer a one-man show. He has a waiter now, too.