It's been two years since Barbara and Mano Rafael, the owners of Le Fou Frog Restaurant in the River Market, stopped serving lunch.
But since customers kept requesting them to bring back lunch service, they toyed with the idea until the restaurant's chef de cuisine, Justin Cooley, offered to oversee a Thursday-only lunch -- during the winter holidays only -- so he could introduce a few dishes of his own.
"Justin is a Cordon Bleu graduate and his dream is to open his own
French restaurant someday," Barbara Rafael says. "This gives him the
opportunity to oversee the kitchen on his own."
Thursdays have proven successful enough that Cooley and the Rafaels plan to extend the one-day-a-week lunch service through 2011. There are a few familiar Le Fou Frog appetizers and entrees on the lunch menu and several new innovations created just for the Thursday lunch menu from Cooley, like a sweetbreads ravioli.
Lunch hours on Thursday are from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Reservations are suggested -- the December 16 lunch seatings are sold out -- by calling 816-474-6060.
