When Bernard Baudrand sold Le Gaulois 1H years ago, the buyers sought to maintain the continuity in food and decor that made the restaurant so popular in Foggy Bottom and then in Alexandria. At first they didn't get it quite right, and the restaurant missed this award last year. Now they seem to be back on track with very good provincial-French cooking. The cozy dining rooms with brick walls and fireplaces make a winter visit especially pleasant.

On recent visits there were fine starters of fricassee of calamari; a warm ratatouille of zucchini, eggplant, tomatoes, and onions; mussels with garlic and parsley that had oomph; and perhaps best of the lot, a terrine of chicken livers with green peppercorns.

Main courses included an excellent cassoulet de Castelnaudary, named after the cassoulet capital of France, with duck confit, pork, lamb, and sausage to go with the fine beans; a pot-au-feu of boiled beef and chicken with vegetables in a aromatic broth that would have been easier to manage in a pot than a soup plate; a quenelle of pike with sauce Nantua; and a rack of lamb that lacked nothing in flavor but was undersize and accompanied by thick string beans rather than trim haricot verts. A lunchtime special of veal stew was excellent and generous. Desserts were good--chocolate-mousse cake, mango-mousse cake, a mixed-fruit tart, and a covered apple tart.