Chef Peter Woolsey is back in the kitchen at Bistrot La Minette

Ten years after he stepped out of the kitchen at Bistrot La Minette in Queen Village, Peter Woolsey is back behind the stove.

“I thought it’d be weird, but I can’t begin to tell you how much I like it,” he said the other day before service. “I’m a much different person 10 years later. I’m not as excitable. Maturity is helpful.”

Woolsey’s career arc, like so many others’, was upended in 2020. Woolsey grew up in West Philadelphia and Lower Merion, studied at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, married a Frenchwoman named Peggy, and worked at such destinations as Striped Bass and Washington Square before opening the intimate La Minette in 2008. He was its chef for the first five years.

As he began branching out to other projects, he stepped away from La Minette’s day to day. When he opened La Peg at the FringeArts’ headquarters in Old City in 2014, Woolsey hired Kenny Bush to run the kitchen at La Minette. For 2019′s opening of Gabi on North Broad Street — where Bush was a partner — Woolsey hired Grant Lloyd to run La Minette.

Then came 2020. “The pandemic didn’t have the greatest effect on the empire I attempted to build,” Woolsey said. Gabi closed and Woolsey’s contract at the Fringe ran out. (Bush is now co-owner of Fringe Bar, where La Peg was, and Bush and Lloyd soon will open The Morris at the Morris House Hotel in Washington Square West.)

Woolsey said he is now looking at his restaurant through fresh eyes. It’s still smart looking with antique furniture and flea market finds. He’s tweaked the menu, adding monthly fixed-price specials from various regions of France, while retaining staples, such as the trout meunière, escargots, and the mustard-braised rabbit. Oeuf du pêcheur, a classic inspired by Normandy, is still on the menu after 15 years. The “fisherman’s egg” is poached and served on buttered toast with mussels and a cream sauce made from mussels.

“There’s something soulful about it that just makes everyone happy,” he said.

“One of our goals is to make it feel as if we could rip [the restaurant] out of the foundation and drop ourselves in France and never skip a beat, and no one could notice that we’re from America. There’s a lot that goes into that — the selection of forks and glasses and chairs and tables and artwork — but then the food itself. We want to do French soul food, and part of that is people eating dishes that they’ve never had before” in the United States.

At 45, his long-term plans are to “raise my kids, keep Bistrot running at the top of its game, and to eventually open a cheesesteak spot in Marseille.”