It took me three dinners to discover mine. I found most of the food to have strikingly little flavor, whether because the prices mandate inferior ingredients or because the kitchen is pumping out so much food every night. First courses are particularly chancy—though, as with pretty much the whole menu, you can get some safe and perfectly fine ones. The smoked salmon ($8.75) is fresh and nicely oily, cold-smoked in-house, according to one of the chefs, Keenan Langlois (the executive chef is Christopher Robins, who worked with Woods at Aquitaine). But don’t bother with the silver-dollar chickpea blini served with it, which look like soggy greenish cocktail crackers and taste of nothing. The potato tart with Roquefort and truffles ($6.75) has a zing from the Roquefort and grated Parmesan (which I initially mistook for grains of mustard) baked into its shell. It’s rich, satisfying, and ideal for winter. Salads—roasted beet with pear, walnuts, and Roquefort ($7.50) and the “Gaslight” ($7.75), with haricots verts and lardons—are okay, if unmemorable.

The pâté de campagne ($7.50), a brasserie dish that should be good, is generic, with the barest hint of white onion and few discernible traces of the smoked ham and brandy Langlois told me were in it. And even if the onion soup ($6.50) did in fact have the fresh veal stock, truffle peelings, and braising liquid from short ribs that Langlois described, it was thin, greasy, and tinny.

Better to go straight to the main courses, which are much more successful, and much better deals. The sliced leg of lamb with garlic, herbs, and sliced baked potatoes with Morbier cheese is a steal at $18.75. I haven’t had lamb with this much steaky flavor in a long time—and I’ve had plenty of lamb racks and chops that start at twice the price. A very respectable steak frites was another bargain, at $19.75. The fish dishes are more hit-and-miss: The roast salmon filet with garlic-braised escarole and lemon confit ($19.25) is duller than it sounds, delivering all the mealy texture and weak flavor of fatty farmed salmon. But a trickier fish offering did come off well: pôelée espagnol, with cod, shellfish, and chorizo (pôelée for pan-braised, espagnol for the Spanish sausage). Each chunk was cooked right and, surprisingly, had character. At $19.50, this is also a good buy.

My favorite of the main courses was the croque-monsieur ($9.75)—a brasserie standard that not everyone revives, though everyone should since it’s French comfort food par excellence. Robins makes his with buttered brioche smeared with béchamel and layered with ham, then baked under a brick and browned at the finish with even more béchamel and cheese. It’s pillowy and divine, and cheap.

If you had the croque-monsieur without ham and cheese, you could sprinkle it with powdered sugar and call it dessert—a far better option than ordering the humdrum sweets on the menu (all $6.75), none of which was outright bad, but all of which were disappointing. The warm almond cake was oddly moist, grainy, and heavy; the lemon tart anemic; the tarte Tatin low in fruit and caramel, its defining characteristic, with a flavorless crust. For novelty, at least, try the far breton, a low, clafouti-like custard baked in a cake pan with brandy-soaked prunes and raisins. It’s a little rubbery, but an improvement on the Grand Marnier–soaked crêpes flambé.

Gaslight needs to refine its take on a very-tried-and-not-always-true formula. But go ahead and enjoy the scene while it’s hot: If you order wisely, you’ll have a solid meal that makes the accompanying people-watching a hot bargain.