Save-More Car Rental. The Hangar Charcoal Steaks. Cheetah Nude Dancing. The Vault Self-Storage Warehouse. Rich's Place Package Goods and Cocktails. The signs flash by on this dreary four-lane strip. "Welcome to Wheeling—the village with feeling." Finally, painted in neat black-and-white script, a tastebud red alert: Le Français. The building looks like a suburban developer's vision of a French country inn, and the visitor pauses for a moment to savor the incongruity. Wheeling, Ill. (pop. 23,089), is a beer-and-pretzels kind of town with a sizable blue-collar population. Yet here, 30 miles from downtown Chicago, is one of the best restaurants in the U.S.
Le Français has verve that Craig Claiborne calls "pyrotechnic." Its sauces have been described as "psychedelic." One hundred twenty gastronomes polled by Playboy magazine picked Le Francais as the No. 2 restaurant in the country (after Manhattan's grand palais de cuisine Lutece). Bon Appétit proclaimed Le Français "America's greatest restaurant." Almost from the day it opened in 1973, the nation's growing cadres of gourmets and gourmands have been journeying to Le Français, "like dedicated pilgrims," observed one Chicago critic, "on their way to a shrine." The cost of dinner for two with only a modest wine can run more than $150. But Le Français regularly attracts a crowd of 120 to 150 people a night, and there is often a six-week waiting list for a reservation.
Behind the restaurant's success is its inventive chef-owner, Jean Banchet, 41. Stocky, with brown curly hair and square beard, he looks like a scaled-down version of Luciano Pavarotti and has the artistic temperament to match. Banchet was trained in the great restaurants of France, including that of Paul Bocuse, the high priest of la nouvelle cuisine. He commands his array of convection ovens, cannibal-size stockpots and giant food processors with the same authority that Sir Georg Solti displays when conducting the Chicago Symphony. "It's like an orchestra," Banchet explains, "where every piece must play its part."
At Le Français Maestro Banchet puts on a gala performance for two seatings a night, six nights a week. From noon to midnight he prowls the stainless-steel corridors of his ultramodern kitchen, setting a whirlwind pace for his 32-member staff. "Sacrebleu! Sacrebleu!" he shouts at a sous-chef when something goes wrong. One minute he is throwing whole fistfuls of truffles into a twelve-quart mixing bowl. Next he starts a pheasant paté, followed by a lobster and crayfish mousse. Tasting each creation in turn, he makes several mid-course corrections, adding a little salt here, a little cream there. Finally he is satisfied. Offering his visitor a taste of the gloriously light mousse, he nods his head gravely. "Nobody," he says, "can make a mousse like I can make a mousse."