Japanese chefs in Washington, like Kaz Okoshi of Kaz Sushi Bistro and Hisao Abe of Kotobuki will tell you that when they first arrived in the capital in the 1980s there were no decent places to eat sushi. Now sushi outlets proliferate almost as widely as do Starbucks outlets. How did we ever manage without them?

These days you might begin to ask the same of brasseries. First there was Les Halles, an outpost of Anthony Bourdain's New York brasserie bistro that arrived in Washington in 1990. That spawned Bistro du Coin when one of Les Halles' managers broke away to launch a corner of St Germain Les Près on Connecticut Avenue.

Now a rash of brasseries has broken out across the capital and you can't move for menus boasting Onglet et Frites - hanger steak served with fries as long and pliant as a strawberry Twizzler. When the Chanel boutique left its space to the left of the Willard Intercontinental Hotel, the Café du Parc moved in, overseen long distance by Antoine Westermann, the 3-star Michelin chef of Drouant in Paris. In the enthusiastic hands of young Christophe Marque, rillettes, confits and cassoulets bring a taste of provincial French life to the heart of the capital - albeit in a room so brightly illuminated, you'd more likely invite your suspicious in-laws than your precious sweetie.

With Eric Ripert's Westend Bistro in the RitzCarlton on 23rd and M Sts NW, Robert Weidmaier's Brasserie Beck at 1101 K St NW and Michel Richard's Central on Pennsylvania Ave NW at 10th Street - not to mention Capitol Hill's Bistro Bis and Montmartre, and the latter's sister Montsouris south of Dupont Circle on P St a few blocks below La Tomate on Connecticut Ave near R St, with Le Chat Noir up on Wisconsin Ave NW south of Fessenden St NW, there's a brasserie menu in almost every quarter of the capital.

You'd think Michel Richard's Central might be a good destination for people who'd like to eat at his Citronelle but don't want to dig that deep into their pockets.  Brasserie dishes should be reasonably priced, given they are contrived, generally speaking, from cheaper cuts of meat submitted to traditional but not particularly complex cooking techniques. But like Citronelle, Central is pricey.

Along with the capital's other brasseries, it seeks to bring a corner of Paris to Washington DC. It's not helped by its angular interior design: It's not noisy, it's raucous. Shouts reverberate. This is not the place for an intimate rendezvous. It's packed, which is good, though it feels it, which is less so. Tables are close to one another. Wait staff bustle. So far, so French. But were Central Parisian, you'd be more likely to find it located somewhere round the Gard du Nord than off chic Boulevard Haussmann. This is the kind of place that in Paris you'd pick when you're short of time before catching a train. That's the atmosphere.

The food? It's good brasserie fare, well executed, albeit with a hand at the salt crock heavy even for this salt enthusiast. He Who Must Sometimes Be Obeyed said his fish-and-chips was one of the best examples he'd had outside Britain, its batter light and greaseless. His onion tart starter was more like the kind of thing you get in Alsace than the cushiony quiche-like lunch choice of an elegant matron that he'd anticipated. It was a flatbread with a spread of onions and cheese on top that didn't touch the spot he'd hoped it would. However, my onion soup was the real Rungis (the wholesale produce market) McKoy. My pig's foot, though, had undergone deconstruction, its myriad knuckles and tiny bones removed, the whole confection then rolled up and breaded and fried. It emerged from treatment as a large spring roll, lying in a big pool of mustard sauce beside a hump of delicious potato purée, one large tangle of exceptional fried onion rings and a smaller tangle of frisée au lardons salad. I was sorry it wasn't the simple, gelatinous trotter sitting in a dark reduction, the miracle of slow cooking à la Marco Pierre White that I'd expected. Still, it was a good, very rich, if not very attractive, plateful, and an impressive slight-of-hand accomplishment for this cheap meat.

The thing about French brasseries in France is that they are where you can expect to find traditional dishes cooked without fanfare and served without ceremony in unpretentious surroundings at a reasonable price. At Central you're unlikely to get out after two courses and two glasses of wine each at less than $55 per person. Which is a lot for a brasserie, and a lot for one that leaves you feeling your train to the provinces is waiting on a platform just outside its front door.

Central is located at 1001 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, 202 626 0015.

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