Le Gourmand Restaurant is inconspicuous. But after watching chef/owner Bruce Naftaly start a sauce reduction with six cups of stock, a bottle of red wine, four cups of heavy cream and four cups of cognac I’ll never pass that corner of Northwest Market and 9th with the same eyes.

Evidently cognac is as essential as salt (per Bruce it always needs more salt). The unexpected lesson from Le Gourmand’s cooking class was insight into my partner’s relationship with food preparation.

Before Martin and I merged our knives, larders and cookbooks I should have attended one of Bruce’s relatively unpublicized yet always full last Sunday of the month cooking classes. Sitting next to Martin on one of 14 chairs compressed into the restaurant kitchen for the evening class was like being able to observe him in the womb.

The liberal use of unsalted butter, exclusive use of sea salt, jars of raspberries preserved in sugar and cheap vodka, the same wine in the sauce as the drinking glass, even the way he slices shallots suddenly made sense. Long after outgrowing a childhood with five kids vying for meat and potatoes he had been reborn in Bruce’s small kitchen with the six-burner range, excellent utensils and infinite supply of heavy cream.

For 20 years Le Gourmand has been quietly maintaining its national reputation in the dining room and dishing plates directly from the pot to students in when the dining room is closed. In five years as a “regular” Martin even compiled a cookbook of Bruce’s recipes, tracking his always seasonal menus. He has been applying those recipes since he stopped attending class regularly; making his own stock (hence the shrimp shells in the freezer and the occasional purchase of pig trotters), roasting chestnuts for a homemade ice cream.

Aware of Bruce’s invisible presence in our merged kitchen, I decided it was time for me to attend a class. Even after four years of absence Martin found familiar faces in the tight cluster of people writing on small clipboards. On one side of the work space stood Bruce in a long striped apron, ready to prepare a meal out loud for 14 adults for the second time that day at $75 per person.

Bruce lacks any pretention; admitting later that he hates publicity. He just happens to be a classically trained chef who has always delighted in creating recipes with local, seasonal foods, and always has.

“Everything is late this year,” he announces immediately. “No morels, but there’s ginger root, sorrel, nettles…there’s always another wild thing.”

For the next three hours he weighed radishes from his son’s school farm, passed around maple flowers, pushed stinging nettles into the stockpot with tongs and prepared a soup, a sorbet, and two reductions to accompany a fish and a chicken course along with wine and bread.

Throughout the class he changed his minds about measurements,

“Sorry, just decided.”

Never hurrying he put five burners in service, had radishes rolling around in butter, two cream sauces “bubbling away nicely,” stuffed sole to poach, broke apart oyster mushrooms, ladled asparagus and nettle soup, sliced chicken breasts and plated them, passed out sorbet and took sips of the wine that was ingredient and accompaniment to all the courses.

He occasionally wiped the countertop with a tea towel (another aha moment for me) while seemingly cooking by ear, the hiss that is below sauté, the bubbling of a reduction. He would taste with two spoons, dipping one in the sauce and dribbling its contents onto the other, adding copious amount of sea salt until it tasted right to him. In a rare still moment as the chicken breasts cooked a bit longer in the mushroom-sorrel sauce he confided that business is great in the bar, terrible in the restaurant.

We created a special recession menu for the first time – three courses for $45 (the “Mon Dieu” menu).

He’d planned an entire nine course dinner to feature Claudio Corallo chocolates but didn’t have enough initial interest (14 people in the kitchen showed immediate interest).

“I know a lot of food writers,” he said, “but it turns out they need lots of lead time on events. I hate publicity but I’ve been trying to tell everybody I know about the specials.”

He plucked out a chicken breast and swung it from pot to cutting board.

“We only need to fill 30 seats to book the dinner,” he said.

“What’s your turnover?” a student asked.

Bruce laughed. “Turnover? Our diners spend three hours at the table. We’re not trying to turn any tables. People can take their time.”

He tasted the sauce one more time. “Needs a little salt,” he exclaimed and everyone laughed again, finally looking less worried at the effort of transcribing his words, watching his every move and balancing their wine glass.

For the April class it was the first time he had made any of the dishes.

“I’ve made variations,” he said. “But I go to the Farmer’s Market and see what’s there. I work better at the last minute, and it’s all so weather dependent.”

Next to me Martin laboriously wrote recipes while I noted phrases - “bring out the inner tenderness of asparagus” and “skim the scum.” Martin’s nose was aquiver like a hunting dog when he catches scent of my cat. I could understand better his desire to protect his filet knife, snap asparagus by hand. Why he cringes at the sound of my badly minced garlic exploding rather than hissing.

Bruce’s students are not planning to become commercial chefs, but none will pass Le Gourmand’s innocent façade without thinking of a certain creation, some marriage of cognac and cream. The dining room may not be accessible to everyone but on the last Sunday of the month the kitchen is a veritable open book, as food-stained, straightforward and savory as Bruce Naftaly himself, a man who constantly delights in the next wild thing.

Le Gourmand is open for dinner Wednesday-Saturday nights. Sambar is open Monday-Saturday. Their web site in case you want to read the description of a nine course chocolate dinner is at www.legourmandrestaurant.com.