The entrées are stronger than the first courses, some of which have a routine, I-know-how-to-make-this-it-bores-me air (as was the case with a ho-hum endive salad with apples, walnuts, and Roquefort, $11). The homemade terrines, including rabbit and pistachio ($13) and country pâté ($13), had nice chunks of meat and fat but were low in flavor. Santos will travel far to find what he wants—the sausages for an excellent choucroute Alsacienne ($29) come from no less than Schaller & Weber, the renowned German butcher in New York—and he told me he was desperately searching for the most necessary ingredient, pig throat. (I suggested Chinatown.) Maybe that will solve the problem, but the pâtés shouldn’t have been served cold and hard, or with dry edges. Two big-deal Provençal emblems, soupe de poisson ($14) and bouillabaisse ($35), were also big letdowns—the soup wimpy and saltless, and the bouillabaisse lackluster—and not just because New England can’t offer the rockfish that is to bouillabaisse what pig throat is to pâté. The shrimp and mussels were bland, and I wanted to ask for the base to be cooked down by half.

Fish is, in fact, the weakest part of La Voile’s menu, perhaps because Santos hasn’t found sources as good as the ones he has for meat. The sea bass ($34) comes straight from Riviera waters, he told me, and is boned tableside (there’s a lot of that kind of shtick here, much of it dispensable, given the frequently hard-to-find waiters). The big portion was perfectly grilled, but the fish didn’t have much flavor and lacked the potent Provençal wild fennel flavor that the menu promises. No crisp skin, either. Dover sole ($44), an expensive showpiece that few places in Boston offer, was mealy rather than meaty, with a flaccid if golden-brown flour-butter coat. The best seafood I tried was an appetizer: sea scallops ($18) sliced horizontally (French economy) and pan-seared until the edges were nicely black, deglazed with cider vinegar, and prettily arranged over fresh arugula and spinach.

With meat, by contrast, the cooks seem unable to take a false step. A first course of foie gras steamed in a big leaf of savoy cabbage ($20) was a new way to understand that delicacy, the lightly crunchy cabbage wrapper protecting and highlighting the meat’s subtle firmness. Santos told me he swiped the recipe from Alain Senderens—in whose legendary Paris restaurant Lucas Carton he once worked—but that he’d probably drop it for the ever popular sautéed foie gras. (He since has.) The sliced filet mignon, $31 and worth it, was tender yet full of steak flavor (as filet mignon practically never is), perhaps because, despite what the menu says, it’s not grilled but sautéed whole, the way French cooks make steak. The lamb shank ($23) was braised until it fell apart in a wine-tomato sauce scented with the fresh herbes de Provence La Voile regularly receives courtesy of UPS. It was unapologetically, authoritatively lamby. And another dish that’s a great bargain.

With luck, by the time you get to La Voile, its pastry chef will be in place, a necessary addition. Santos told me his Parisian hire was waiting for a visa, which likely explained why the apple tart ($7) and raspberry mille-feuille ($8) were soggy and flavorless. But the puddings were quite satisfying, particularly a delicate rice pudding with a foamy top reminiscent of riz à l’impératrice ($7), and a very good crème brûlée ($7). And then there was the stellar île flottante ($7) to which I alluded earlier, a “floating island” of milk-poached meringue drizzled with caramel, topped with toasted flaked almonds, and served over a light, vanilla-scented crème anglaise. Ile flottante, like blanquette de veau, is French comfort food that everyone forgets about, and few people get right. La Voile gets it right.