Contemporary French food is having a moment in metro Phoenix. And it looks nothing like the stolid white tablecloth bistros of yesteryear.

Three new restaurants are leading the trend. In the hopping Roosevelt Row bar district, Sottise turns up the volume until you're screaming over your pan of baked camembert. Over in Old Town, Francine has the energy of a Miami nightclub with a sprawling dining room and flashy clientele making it one of the hardest tables to book at Scottsdale Fashion Square. Then there's Christopher's at Wrigley Mansion, which is in a category of its own.

The passion project from the James Beard Award-winning chef involves an outlandish tasting menu complete with inside jokes and dessert that comes out of the table. Chef Gross may serve you classic foie gras, but it'll be perched atop a bright blue sculpture inspired by the hand of his partner, Jamie Hormel. In other words, this isn't your grandma's French fine dining experience. 

And while France may not rule the culinary kingdom like it did a generation ago, these restaurants prove that the iconic food can be as fresh and relevant as ever.

Here are three French restaurants where you should make a reservation for your next special occasion. 

Housed in a beautiful restored bungalow smack in the middle of downtown's hottest drinking district, the second restaurant from TJ Culp and Esther Noh of Restaurant Progress is a love song to Parisian cafes and homey dishes of the French countryside.

Part wine bar, part restaurant, part vinyl music venue that gets considerably louder as the evening moves on, it's also a sleek place to party. There's barely anything in the way of entrees and most of the sharable plates are very small and very delicious. 

The roasted golden beets are infatuating. Get ready to be walloped by the mound of creamy horseradish sauce they sit on. Next, get the escargot. The preparation is simple and all about the butter, which wafts up from those big, bulbous snail shells. And if you're only going to have one large plate, make it the trout almondine. With a gorgeous pan-fried crust scattered with almonds and dressed in a sumptuous brown butter sauce, it's a showstopper.

Sincere, stylish and just a bit hipster, Sottise shows that the Phoenix dining scene is coming into its own.

Details: 1025 N. Second St., Phoenix. 602-254-6378, sottisephx.com.

Sottise review: Chef turned piece of Phoenix history into hottest restaurant

The pride of Scottsdale Fashion Square, Francine is a beautiful restaurant filled with even more beautiful people. It's a place where you can ball out with oysters and filet mignon or snack on a simple salad niçoise.

The menu is a collage of recipes from chef Laurent Halasz's mother, for whom the restaurant is named, skillfully put together by executive chef Brian Archibald. 

The $48 price tag may be a little steep for the portion, but I fell in love with the fruity flavor pairings of Francine's duck breast. They looked like beets and tasted like a jolt of cranberry juice, but the red circular slabs on the plate were actually roasted plums. The deep sourness was a perfect foil for the juicy duck, cooked to a striking rare and split in half to display its redness.

Francine shows that French cuisine can be anything it wants to be. It can be languid, it can be loud. Either way, it exudes a stylish confidence, both in the kitchen and in the dining room.

Details: 4710 N. Goldwater Blvd., Scottsdale. 480-690-6180, francinerestaurant.com. 

More about Francine: Powerhouse shows French food is still sexy, surprising

Chef Christopher Gross has been a Phoenix name for five decades, and this is his wildest and most decadent project to date. Working directly with renowned architect Wendell Burnette, Gross and his partner, Jamie Hormel, built a futuristic, architectural marvel of a restaurant onto the side of her Spanish colonial mansion. The restaurant has a retractable roof and ceiling-height panoramic windows that overlook a lush cactus garden and the Phoenix skyline.

On the weekends, he puts out an eight-course tasting menu where chocolates appear from secret table compartments and servers ring bronze bells while you eat Oregon blue cheese.

His wagyu beef sukiyaki was one of the most nuanced, decadent bites of steak I've ever tasted: a black stone block decked out with strips of sizzling wagyu beef from the Miyazaki prefecture of Japan. 

My French-inflected meals at Christopher's reminded me that a chef can be a visionary, an artist who offers a taste of wonderment, weirdness and beauty. 

Christopher's review: I had the wildest dinner of my life here. It earned every star

Reach reporter Andi Berlin at amberlin@azcentral.com. Follow her on Facebook @andiberlin, Instagram @andiberlin or Twitter @andiberlin.

Subscribe to azcentral.com today.