Jean-Pierre is closing. Le Pavillon is gone. French restaurants, which once ruled the golden tables of Washington, are becoming an endangered species.

Nearly every restaurateur of every cuisine is complaining about the recession. But downtown French restaurants, particularly the haute ones, are the most visible casualties. In 1978 there were 43 French restaurants in the District. Now there are only about two dozen. And in the past year only two new ones have opened.

At Le Lion d'Or, which was Washington's most nationally celebrated restaurant in the French-dining heyday, it was said for years that there was never an empty seat. One day recently only nine tables were occupied at lunch.

Why is the downtown French restaurant becoming as scarce as a truffle in a Bethesda back yard? The proprietors, chefs and sommeliers of some of the District's most acclaimed restaurants offer a potpourri of explanations.

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It costs too much.

A mere lunchtime appetizer of foie gras, for instance, is $22 at Le Lion d'Or. "We use a lot of noble products, and they are not cheap," explains chef Jacques Blanc of Georgetown's Chez Grandmere. "And it requires skilled people to prepare them."

Cooking French is a drawback "if you want to do volume," says chef Robert Greault of La Colline. With a cuisine that is labor-intensive and prepared to order, too many cooks raise the price of the broth.

The traditional source of funds for such heady fare -- the executive expense account -- isn't what it used to be, thanks to the recent tax laws limiting deductions to meals. And sales of wine and liquor -- which generate a much higher rate of profit for restaurants than the food -- are way down among an increasingly health-conscious clientele.

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They're too formal and pretentious. The window at Lion d'Or still warns (in gold letters), "Coat and Tie Required." Yet chef Jean-Pierre Goyenvalle admits, "The tendency of people is to be a little more casual." His restaurant is one of the last holdouts of tableside preparation and traditional service. "I still try to be classic. That's what I've learned, that's what I think I do best."

Those sauces! "Now, of course, everyone is on a diet. They don't want cream and they don't want butter, and that was the basis of our cooking," says Gerard Pain, owner of La Chaumiere on M Street. But many French chefs counter that they have lightened up, although the myth remains. "You can steam things, you can grill things and still be French," asserts Blanc.

There are so many alternatives. Fifteen years ago, a fancy Washington restaurant meant a French restaurant. Now well-heeled diners instead are turning to such diverse choices as Bice (Modern Milanese), 21 Federal (New American) and Bombay Club (Nouveau Indian).

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"In America, everything changes," says Michel Laudier, formerly chef of the now-defunct Rive Gauche. "There is a trend, there is a food; it's in, it's out."

And even during the heyday of French restaurants, the competition became too intense. Inspired by the success of restaurants like Jean-Pierre, other chefs converged on downtown until there was a glut.

Maison Blanche, the expense account restaurant closest to the White House, has had another, more specialized problem. "Three or four years ago the White House told its people not to talk to the press anymore," said owner Tony Greco, and "my place was where the media met for lunch."

It's easier in the suburbs. "Washington was a good town for restaurants 15 or 20 years ago," says Raymond Campet, maitre d' and co-owner of La Brasserie on Capitol Hill. But now "there are all those little cities -- McLean, Reston, Falls Church -- that have pretty little restaurants."

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"In the suburbs, people don't go as much for the trends and the fashion," says Michel Laudier. "And the expenses are a lot less." Witness the success of L'Auberge Chez Francois in Great Falls, Va., or Le Gaulois in Old Town Alexandria, both of which moved from downtown while they were still thriving. "Downtown is tough," says Jean-Michel Farret, owner of Jean-Pierre, simply. His restaurant will serve its last meal on July 27.

In the suburbs, French restaurants seem to flourish and decline in similar proportion to other restaurants in their price range. Though they too have felt the recession and have taken a back seat to Italian, American and Asian restaurants in recent years, they don't seem to die off simply because they are French. Nor do most suburban French restaurants need to maintain the high intensity of patronage that downtown restaurants require to survive their high rents.

What's a chef to do?

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Relocate and reinvent yourself. Robert Greault adjusted long ago. He escaped K Street in 1984 when Le Bagatelle closed, having already taken a risk two years earlier by opening La Colline on Capitol Hill, then practically a restaurant wasteland. La Colline had "French cooking but in a less pretentious manner," and it also had distinctly lower prices. (Greault's foie gras is only $8.75, at dinner yet.) Even so, business was slow the first two years. Now Greault considers Capitol Hill a very good location and his simpler style an advantage. "We are doing extremely well," he said.

Change your accent. Michel Laudier now cooks Italian: He's the chef at Tragara in Bethesda. Along the way, after Rive Gauche, he tried a French restaurant in Baltimore and a kosher catering company. "There are only two types of cooking: the good and the bad," insists Laudier. Having been in America for 20 years, he says, "I am an American chef." On Laudier's Italian menu he has only one cream sauce. And, he notes dryly, it is not very popular.

And recently, La Tomate, on Connecticut Avenue above Dupont Circle, put up a sign informing the public that it's an Italian restaurant. Promote yourself. "There's an American expression," says Raymond Campet in his thick French accent. "Let's keep on our toes." His La Brasserie is starting a frequent-diner awards program. This and many other restaurants are offering fixed-price dinners, American Express and air shuttle tie-ins, not to mention ever-more-extravagant Bastille Day celebrations.

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Cut expenses. High-salaried chefs have been laid off, cadres of waiters have been trimmed. Truffles and caviar are being replaced by shiitake mushrooms and exotic vinegars. The French are adopting that high-profit entree, pasta.

Wait it out. "The spring was very good, we had a good month of May, and June was not that bad," says Goyenvalle. The center is holding, he concludes. At the Watergate, the internationally acclaimed Jean-Louis, despite its stellar prices, is still thriving as usual. Business at La Chaumiere is steady, down just 3 or 4 percent from last year, although liquor sales -- which are very profitable for a restaurant -- are way down.

Raymond Campet is insistent in his optimism. La Brasserie's dinner business shows signs of improving, he says, and he attributes his good fortune to D.C. Mayor Sharon Pratt Dixon. Fear of crime has, in recent years, been a significant deterrent to in-town dining. But the fear has dissipated with this new city administration, Campet says. "People are not even talking about it anymore."

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And at Maison Blanche, Tony Greco says there are good nights and bad nights, but he thinks things have bottomed out. "At some point," he says, "people are going to give up and say, 'Let me enjoy life, please.' "

Maybe it's chauvinism, maybe it's all those years of arduous training, but French chefs seem to see their craft's survival as a mission. Even Laudier says, "There will always be very good French restaurants like Le Lion d'Or, there will always be very fancy French restaurants like Jean-Louis, there will always be a bistro."

Blanc goes even further. He scoffs that some Italian chefs here "wouldn't even find Italy on the map of the world," and insists that this city "needs high-class restaurants like Lion d'Or," though he sees bistros -- casual and inexpensive -- as the French restaurants of the future. And he is definitive: "If you take the French technique of cooking away, there is nothing left."

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