Philippe Leban’s new spring menu may be compact, but it’s brilliantly executed. Saffron gnocchi: fluffy pillows of French-style flour-based gnocchi, paired with loads of tender oysters! Croque madame: buttery, salty and scrumptious, on house-baked bread which has just the right crumb (not like that overly-chewy mass at Franck's which I can barely gnaw through--sorry I adore the Salade Franck, and loads of other stuff there, but that croque...).

But the star of the Ham House show, or at least, the star of my lunch this week, was snail pizza. Okay, it’s not actually called Snail Pizza on the menu--it has some fancy name: “tart flambee with snails bordelaise” but don’t let that scare you off. These juicy fat imported snails are remarkably tender, almost like morsels of chicken, but far far richer in taste. Interestingly, snails have an earthy and complex flavor, rather than that mineral saline taste of other shellfish. They are swimming (snails don’t actually swim, do they? creeping? crawling?) in butter, garlic and parsley, and set atop a crispy house-baked wafer of toast that is the perfect absorption pad for those fragrant escargot juices. At 55 kuai, it’s a lunchtime steal. Argg.. I wish I could order it without leaving my house.

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