If the subject is food, my mind can work in mysterious ways. When our editor asked me to take a combined look at two restaurants with decidedly French names and largely French cuisines, I immediately thought of an American novelette and an English opera.

Based on Herman Melville’s Billy Budd, Foretopman, Benjamin Britten’s Billy Budd is set on a British battleship during the Napoleonic Wars. The officers voice an antipathy for the French that many Americans recently seemed to share. “Don’t like the French,” the sailing master sniffs. “Don’t like their frenchified ways.” The captain and his staff call France “the eternal enemy of righteousness” and proclaim their preference for “British brawn and beef” over the stereotypical slim-line Parisian physique and the foffy grub they imagined their super-refined enemies ate in 1797.

Similar sentiments were pretty popular in this country just a few years ago, when relations between the two nations suggested the rivalry between Houston and Dallas. When France opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq, boycotts of French goods were called for, the cafeterias serving the U.S. House of Representatives were ordered to start serving freedom fried and freedom toast, and a downtown Houston restaurant with a French-sounding name changed its moniker after vandals hit the place.

Those days appear to be over, and local foodies can be glad that the two more or less Gallic-oriented eateries discussed below seem to be thriving.

Named after French cities, both restaurants toss around the (not always correctly spelled) French names and categories of their dishes, but Bistro Calais, located in the historic house that’s more than a century old, goes Bistro Toulouse one better. Its menu boasts a couple of complete French sentences. It also hews more closely to traditional French fare, even though such flagrantly Yankee and even global entrees as seafood gumbo, chicken curry, Cobb salad, and chicken and dumplings turn up on the off-menu chalkboard.

Brie, a classic French cheese that dates back at least as far as Charlemagne, is baked and served with pistachios and a fruit coulis. Calamari are given an allegedly Provencal treatment, which consists of sautéing rings of naked squid rather than breading and deep-frying them, then partnering them with a robust red salsa that packs some heat.

Shifting my focus from Provence to Nice, I sampled the salade Nicoise, another French staple. Bistro Calais’s version topped a heap of greens with canned tuna, skinny green beans cooked nicely al dente, golden brown chunks of roasted new potato, a cut-up-hard boiled egg, a slew of tangy olives and (yay!) probably more anchovies that the average Houston pizza parlor sells in a month.

I ordered the Salade Nicoise as an appetizer, but it was plenty big and substantial enough to be a meal in itself. But that would have meant foregoing the superb entrees on tap in Bistro Calais’s pleasant dining room, hung with shiny copper pots and overlooking a pretty mini-park with a glass green house that’s a popular reception venue.

Sweet and tart marry beautifully in the sticky black cherry citrus sauce glazing a roasted duck breast. For a heartier and equally flavorful meal, a double-cut pork chop the size of a softball but as tender as can be is treated to both fruit (apples) and brandy. And Bistro Calais’s steak frites, the signature dish of every French bistro, would doubtless please even the jingoistic beefeaters in Billy Budd with its sizable cut of tasty meat and crisp French/freedom fries.

Calais is in the north of France, and, like Provence and Nice, Toulouse is in the south. Bistro Toulouse’s southern exposure doesn’t stop at the Mediterranean shoreline. The kitchen in this cozy eatery crosses the water to gather ingredients from North Africa and then heads a few thousand miles due west to the Gulf Coast and beyond to borrow some Cajun and Mexican influences. The culinary globetrotting may be a little disorienting, but the plates are usually most enjoyable.

Thus, two nifty alternatives to such inarguably French starters as onion soup and mussels steamed in wine with Toulouse sausage are Creole crawfish cakes and beer-battered artichoke hearts with harissa (a North African hot sauce), cotija cheese and a chipotle-spiked aioli. I am happy to report that the crawfish cakes, encrusted with panko (Japanese bread crumbs) and enlivened by a Champagne vinegar Remoulade, are terrific, and the artichokes have as much kick as the liveliest can-can dancer.

Delicious, fall-off-the-bone lamb short ribs braised in Cabernet Sauvignon, which would pass muster in any French bistro, are globalized with a dash of kecap (pronounced ketchup) manis, an Indonesian condiment similar to a sweet soy sauce that here has a vaguely barbecue-y flavor. “Loaded Potatoes Anna” earn the warning qualifier by embellishing the rich, buttery classic. Artfully arranged layers of Yukon Gold potatoes are fattened with bacon, cheddar cheese, and chives before being baked in a mould, and the plate-size serving would fill a foursome. Pork braised in milk laced with vanilla was less appealing, however, its sweet sauce seeming more suited to an ice cream sundae than a meat dish.

Laurels for desserts and complimentary starters are shared equally. At Bistro Calais, diners warm up with bread dipped in oil fortified with balsamic vinegar and herbs. At Bistro Toulouse, they much on black and green olives nestled in a puddle of light olive oil tantalizingly tinged with lemon. Toulouse’s pumpkin crème brulee is an exemplary flan paired with a pumpkin-flavored wafer, and the addictive mocha chocolate cup is a bracingly caffeinated chocolate mousse served in an espresso mug. Calais’s lemon tart is basically a world-class version of chess pie, and in the profiteroles, dabs of vanilla ice cream nestle inside cloaks of puff pastry under mantles of luscious chocolate.

In short, both of these restaurants tastily promote America’s rapprochement with the land that give us Lafayette.