You say you want <i>French</i> food?

Laurent Vrignaud’s bistro, Moulin, which he opened in Newport Beach one year ago, isn’t just French. It is really French.

All the fixtures, ingredients and furniture have either been imported from France or brought home by Vrignaud from a trip to his native country.

Many of his employees are also from France. Every time Vrignaud applies to the U.S. Immigration Services to bring an employee from France, he has to pay $5,000. That’s a price he’s willing to pay.

“That’s part of the game, but it’s worth it because I want that authenticity here,” said Vrignaud, who still has a hint of a French accent even though he has been in the U.S. for a few decades. “Everything we do here takes a French-skilled expert.”

He has also gathered the attention of the locals of French descent.

“The minute we opened, the French community expressed their desire to gather one night a week to have a meal,” Vrignaud said. “Right off the bat, I told them we’d do that on Tuesday nights, and we started with about 20 or 30 people. A few months ago, we added Thursday nights.”

It’s the authenticity of the cuisine and the ambience that probably won such immediate — and perhaps surprising — success.

When Vrignaud opened the business, he had only a dream, no restaurant ownership experience.

Now he has the experience, a line of customers out the door nearly every day and a Golden Foodie Awards nomination. The awards ceremony recognizes the best among independent Orange County restaurants.

“It’s been radical,” he said. “There’s been an overwhelming response from the local community. We draw from Newport Beach, Costa Mesa, Irvine and Santa Ana, and from L.A. and Riverside. That’s what happens on the weekends. People come from very far away on the weekends.”

When Vrignaud was a boy living in Montmartre, north of Paris, he frequented French bistros and cafes. As a teenager, he worked in the establishments and patronized them along with his date, the girl who would become his wife.

His family moved to San Francisco during his teenage years, and Vrignaud often told friends he would open a French cafe by age 35. In the meantime, he worked in sales for the action sports industry.

Opening a restaurant took about 15 years longer than he anticipated. Moulin opened its doors in a Newport Beach strip mall last September, when Vrignaud was 50.

He said his original goal was just to bring authentic French food to Orange County, but he never expected the demand to grow so quickly.

From day one, he said, lines formed out the door with people hungry for the Parisian sandwiches, breads and sweets.

“I purposely opened on a Thursday, thinking we’d have the rush of the work week and then it would die down over the weekend,” he said. “But we were busy since day one, and the mornings are so busy on the weekends because the breakfast culture is crazy in America.”

Before opening, his landlord offered him the retail space next door, then occupied by a jewelry store whose lease would soon be expiring, to expand the location. He said within the first few months of opening, he knew he had to take up the offer.

When the building became available, Vrignaud knocked down a wall to combine the two stores and to build a full-fledged bakery, where breads and pastries are made each morning and sold throughout the day until they’re gone.

The restaurant, which started as a breakfast and lunch spot, now also serves a prix fixe dinner every Tuesday and Thursday for $25 per person. Reservations are required, since the restaurant seats only about 50 people for dinner and has no turn-over.

“We’re one of the rare restaurants around here that doesn’t turn tables at dinner time,” he said. “You can stay for 45 minutes or you can stay for three hours. We are never going to need the table for someone else.”

Adding dinner was a “big step,” however, the restaurateur said.

“I never wanted to be a night place,” Vrignaud said. “I really wanted to build a place that would start off waking up with the sun, would explode at lunch with the sun and would die off with the sun.”

Many of his customers are regulars who visit for lunch multiple times a week, akin to the type of people who frequent the bistros and cafes in France, lingering over artisan pastries.

Craig Longuevan, who works at the nearby UC Irvine campus, said he frequents Moulin on his lunch breaks.

“What brings me back time and time again is the outstanding quality of the food and the layout,” he said. “You feel like you’re in France. It’s very enjoyable. My wife and I often come here on the weekends just for coffee, and it’s really nice to have this so close to home. I can almost guarantee that this is better than what you get in France.”

Moulin has been nominated for this year’s Golden Foodie Best New Restaurant of the Year award, an honor Vrignaud said he never could have anticipated.

“The biggest surprise to me is the amount of people from the restaurant world that come here,” he said. “I’ve interacted with a lot of people in the profession and have learned a lot from other people, so having the peers recognize what I’ve done for the last year is pretty incredible.”