Ever wonder how a French bistro got that way? An article in the Times about the man who designed Belleville on Fifth Avenue and 5th Street in Park Slope and other bistros around town.

A Frenchman named Alex Gherab designed this place and many other Left Bank composites, including Belleville in Park Slope, Felix in SoHo, and Juliette in Williamsburg. A short, brusque tornado of a man, with ink-black hair and full beard, Mr. Gherab sweeps into a room with a vision of France in his head. He is aided by his brother, a demolition worker in the French town of Lille, and by a network of “pickers” that he maintains worldwide to collect objects of disparate provenance to outfit their spaces: twin doors from a post office, great lamps from a Calais asylum.