FRESH LOCAL INGREDIENTS OF SUCCESS

Mille Fleurs, 6009 Paseo Delicias, Rancho Santa Fe. (619) 756-3085. Open daily for lunch and dinner. All major credit cards accepted. Dinner for two, food only, about $80.

Gustaf Anders, 2182 Avenida de la Playa, La Jolla. (619) 459-4499. Open daily for lunch and dinner. Mastercard and Visa accepted. Dinner for two, food only, about $80.

When was the last time you tasted a really great tomato? You know the kind--a bright red circle that tastes as if someone had sliced off a piece of the sun and cooled it in a forest stream. The kind that used to fill our summers. The kind that hardly seem to exist anymore.

I had one last week at Mille Fleurs. Next to the red tomato was a slice of green tomato, and it tasted even better. Perched above them was a little globe of soft fresh mozzarella, a cheese that is both sweet and subtle at the same time. The pungent tomatoes and creamy cheese were tied together by a thread of finely balanced vinaigrette, and the whole salad was so good that after I tasted it I said to my friends, “Have what you like, but I’m having another salad for dessert.”

To find tomatoes this good should not have surprised me. Long before it had any restaurants of note, Rancho Santa Fe was a favorite destination of Americans who are passionate about food. They came to stand in line at the world’s best roadside stand, the Chino Ranch, and fill their cars with the finest produce in the country.

“The fruits and vegetables are better than what we have in Europe,” says chef Martin Woesle in his heavy German accent. Woesle starts each day at the Chino Ranch, picking out his vegetables, the flowers with which he will garnish his plates, the 10 to 20 different herbs that go into his sauces, the fruits that make his sorbets. Most chefs would give anything to be in his shoes; the Chinos rarely agree to sell to restaurants, and most of those they do supply are far away. Chez Panisse gets their shipment by air freight, and Spago has to send a car. Woesle, just down the road, is serving produce that is only hours out of the earth.

Woesle responds to the ingredients with enormous enthusiasm: He changes the menu every day. “It makes it interesting for me. But although he says that his food depends on using the best and freshest ingredients, Woesle’s food has no California cliches. The chef’s European background shows in his sauces, his careful presentation--even in the style of the restaurant itself.

The dining room may wear a casual air, with its blend of Spanish hacienda and French provincial, but there is little that is laid-back about Mille Fleurs. Despite the stucco walls and pretty tiles, the service is snappy, and the waiters wear tuxedos, remember your name and jump to pour your wine, fill your glass with water. Hot bread arrives as soon as you have ordered, and you are encouraged to have brandy and cigars in the bar after dinner.

The wine list is expensive, with lots of good Bordeaux at very high prices. Bargain seekers will not find much to drink. The menu also tends to feature lots of luxuries--lobster may be served on a salad of radicchio and endive, and foie gras will be tricked up on a bed of artichokes and leeks in a white truffle oil marinade.

Woesle’s training (he worked at the three-star Aubergine in Munich) really shows in the way he presents his food. These are very pretty plates. Filets of Dover sole were filled with a swirl of salmon mousse and arranged around a bed of wild and regular rice, circling like little pinwheels. There was a sorrel champagne sauce over the fish, which was surrounded by a bouquet of vegetables, and accented with nasturtium blossoms. (Woesle does have a tendency to get carried away with flowers; one night there seemed to be nasturtiums on every plate in the dining room.) Saddle of lamb roasted in a fresh herb crust came accompanied by a little tart filled with the sweetest corn, a tiny carrot, baby squash, one infant tomato that burst with flavor in the mouth and tiny grilled Japanese eggplant which had soaked up the flavor of good olive oil.

Since the menu changes daily it is hard to predict what you will find, but there is always a rack of veal, served in a different manner, and various fish that come from Hawaii (and once a week from Europe). There is usually a simply cooked meat, and generally one interesting dish like calf’s liver sliced with grapes in a light lemon butter.

Desserts tend to the baroque, with a separate menu that includes fantasies like a feuillete of bananas filled with white chocolate mousse in a dark chocolate sauce. But the sorbets here are so fresh tasting, so unsugary, so clearly the essence of fruit, that it would be a shame to pass them up.

Woesle, who says that he came to America to see new things and visit a new country, intended to only stay a year. He has been here for three. But he is not the only European to be seduced by the possibilities of this part of California. The much-acclaimed Gustaf Anders is in nearby La Jolla Shores, and despite all the good things I had heard, I’ll admit that I was still surprised by the sheer excellence of the restaurant.

You feel calm as soon as you enter this elegant and understated room. There is good art on the walls and service that is so smooth it is almost invisible. (An example of the thoughtfulness of the service can be found in the wine list, which has a chart rating the various vintages.)

Attention has been paid to every detail. The restaurant even makes all of its own breads. They are, in a word, wonderful, especially some chewy little rolls that look like homely pebbles on a beach. These are perfect for sopping up the chef’s superb sauces; trying to make sure no drops escaped uneaten, I devoured an entire basket of bread.

This is also a menu that changes daily. There is always caviar with fine blinis to start, and always one very inventive ravioli stuffed with things like sweetbreads and spinach, or foie gras. There is generally a smooth homemade gravad lax .

Chef Ulf Strandberg has a deft touch that verges on the audacious. He likes to juxtapose strong flavors, but his touch is so sure that you hardly even notice. Filet of beef arrived in a deep, intensely worked sauce--red wine with gin lurking around the edges--with a dollop of strong Stilton cheese thrown in. Rather than a war of flavors, the elements of the dish ended up in perfect balance. Veal got an entirely different treatment: The meat, no longer pink but still juicy, came rolled around a soft, garlic-laden filling. It was just on the verge of being too much for the meat, but it merely infused the flesh with its robust flavor. In this case the chef held back on the sauce, topping the veal with its own natural juices so that the crunchiness of the herb-scented, slightly salty skin was accentuated.

Desserts are displayed on a table in the middle of the room, and it is almost impossible to resist them. I haven’t had lunch here, or tried the menu in the extremely lively piano bar, but I’m sure they’re good. At the moment this strikes me as one of the most confident kitchens in California.

Gustaf Anders and Mille Fleurs could hardly be more different in the way that they look and the food that they serve. But they do share one important quality. While both chefs laud the local products, neither works in the California idiom. Both chefs rejoice in the quality of the products--and each is careful to make them his own.