Cafe Angelique’s Sequel Scores Hit With Same Style Menu as Original

When restaurants go out of business, they generally stay out of business. Few return to try again another day.

Catering to the public is a tough and risky game that produces more losers than winners. In many cases, when a kitchen door swings shut for the last time, it has been pushed by an attorney who is holding a bankruptcy petition in his other hand.

Thus, the resurrection of Cafe Angelique is an occurence of more than passing interest. Founded in 1982 by chef/proprietor Martha Fountain, this restaurant originally occupied the rear premises of a Mission Hills antique shop. It captured the public’s fancy, but after two years in operation, problems with the lease forced Fountain out of the location. She then turned her attention to catering private events.

Late in April of this year, Fountain reopened her Cafe Angelique in the old mid-town fire station (at Fifth Avenue and Palm Street) that was remodeled several years ago to house the unusual and short-lived Ambers restaurant. The Ambers decor has been modified somewhat by colors splashed from a pastel palette, accented by bright tapestries and Guatemalan prints. The main dining room opens onto a pretty garden court, a shady, breezy area that makes a pleasant retreat at lunchtime or on mild evenings. A pianist plays during the dinner hour.

The change in location did nothing to alter Fountain’s style of cooking, which is intensely personal. Her style also is quite eclectic, since much of her kitchen tutelage was conducted by her Danish grandmother, her French grandmother, and the cooks she met during a period of residence in Peru. But most importantly, Fountain’s cooking is quite talented, and the Cafe Angelique menu offers several very satisfying creations.

The entree list changes monthly, the appetizer selection daily. Most of the dishes bear a strong resemblance to the classics of the French kitchen, but few are prepared in an entirely traditional manner, since Fountain usually adds an unexpected garnish or an unusually flavored sauce as a signature touch. Although such items as the blackberry sauce that accompanies the breast of chicken salad, and the raspberry bordelaise served with the filet mignon, might seem to point to a nouvelle cuisine inspiration, nouvelle actually appears to have little or no influence here.

Some of Fountain’s appetizers, such as the boned quail stuffed with cheese and crab meat, require considerable labor. Others, among them a delicious ramekin of baked Montrachet goat cheese, demand hardly any effort at all to prepare, but are exceedingly delicious. This particular dish consists of nothing more than fresh, creamy cheese, whipped with a bit of minced onion and set in the oven to acquire the faintest golden tinge. The warm cheese is then spread, by the diners, on rounds of freshly toasted sesame bread, and enjoyed without further ceremony.

The one imperfection of the cooking is the sweetness that pervades too many dishes. Fountain’s sweet tooth probably owes to her Danish heritage; Scandinavians are well known for their tendency to add sugar to almost everything (even, in the case of the justly famous gravad lax salmon, fish.)

But the dash of sugar that sweetens the jalapeno-spiked vinaigrette salad dressing seems unnecessary, and the colorful salad (dinners include a choice of salad or soup) tastes better with the more savory, blue cheese-walnut dressing. The sweetness of the fruit soup, a blend of peaches and melon heightened with mint, is understandable, but it would be nice if the otherwise excellent home-baked rolls that accompany this course contained less sugar. As an alternative to the fruit soup (a staple of Scandinavian summer cookery, often served as a dessert), Fountain offered a smooth, subtle celery-mushroom bisque that tasted faintly, but agreeably, like turkey stuffing.

The entree list rarely runs to more than seven items, usually supplemented by one or two daily specials. The current selection includes such offerings as cold poached salmon dressed with an avocado cream; thinly sliced beef brisket, moistened with a mustard vinaigrette, and sided by marinated vegetables and new potatoes; and filet of sole stuffed with salmon mousse, garnished with scallops and a creamy wine sauce.

As much as the breast of duck with sweet-and-sour plum sauce sounded like a Cantonese concoction, it actually proved to be an elegant, sophisticated dish. The meat, first boned and then roasted until the fat had dripped away and the skin had crisped, was carved into neat wedges and arranged around a hillock of buttered angel hair pasta. Surprisingly, the sauce was not at all sweet (nor was it by any means too sour), but rather nicely balanced between the meaty flavors of the duck’s own juices, and the earthy notes of plum puree. Good, al dente broccoli garnished the serving.

Quality veal costs so much that few restaurants serve it, but the chef who chooses to include a veal chop on his menu has no choice but to buy the best. Fountain does exactly that, and her veal chop lombatino, although toweringly thick, was as soft as freshly churned butter. An engaging sauce of stewed wild mushrooms, capers, fresh tomatoes and prosciutto ham endowed this superb cut of meat with a feisty, Northern Italian flavor. Wild rice complemented the plate, but in truth, the same fragile pasta that accompanied the duck would have done just as well.

All desserts are prepared on the premises. Fountain’s white chocolate-raspberry pot de creme, which doubtless would be proscribed from the diet of anyone who needs to watch his cholesterol, makes an extravagantly rich conclusion to a meal. It should be served warm or at room temperature, however; served chilled, as this one was, it had a consistency too near that of a chocolate bar.

Cafe Angelique.

2870 5th Ave., San Diego.

692-3370.

Dinner served 5:30 to 10 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday, until midnight Friday and Saturday. Lunch served weekdays. Brunch on Sundays.

Credit cards accepted.

Dinner for two, including a modest bottle of wine, tax and tip, $55 to $75.