WHEN PETIT TROIS opened in 2014, the narrow bar was a portal to chef Ludo Lefebvre’s Paris. Partnering with Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo, he poured his Gallic Angeleno spirit into the blond rolled omelet, filled ironically but perfectly with Boursin; escargots saturated in butter and garlic; and the Big Mec burger, drenched in excesses that included foie gras before its ban. The tone, space-wise, was curated for scruffy, appealing indifference, though it never felt like a stage set. Past its doors you disappeared so far from California that you expected to inhale cigarette smoke from the person sitting two inches away.

These days most of us eat on a patio set up in the restaurant’s parking lot. The cooking retains its spirit, though its notions of bar food give way more each year to a conventional restaurant menu. In late summer a magenta slab of duck breast shared its plate with a ripe quarter-moon of peach and a lopsided square of bloomy-rind cheese teetering between solid and liquid. The same entree was served at the restaurant’s larger, brassier Sherman Oaks outpost, and it was a perfect trio. Something about the combination’s indulgent genius made me miss Trois Mec, the closed tasting-menu restaurant in the same strip mall as the original Petit Trois that once rewired ideas about fine dining in America. I still hold out hope for its revival. In the meantime, I’m here for Petit Trois’ evolving synthesis of Lefebvre’s styles.

• 718 N. Highland Ave., Los Angeles, (323) 468-8916, petittrois.com/home; 13705 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks, (818) 989-2600, valley.petittrois.com