Elaborate Stage Is Set for Chateau Orleans

Those who pass through the doorway of the new Chateau Orleans at 926 Turquoise St. in Pacific Beach find themselves on hallowed culinary ground.

It was here, in the summer of 1981, that Wilhelm Gustaf Magnuson and Ulf Anders Strandberg opened the original Gustaf Anders, which started with six tables, expanded to encompass a second dining room, then moved to its current ritzy premises in La Jolla Shores.

When Gustaf Anders decamped in March, 1984, Doug Organ moved in and named the restaurant 926. The enfant terrible of the local chef corps, Organ installed a menu devoted to his interpretations of nouvelle cuisine and redecorated the place in a style less ascetic than Gustaf Anders’. 926 proved more popular than profitable, and in March, Organ marched on, leaving the decor intact and the stage set for Chateau Orleans.

It would not be fair, of course, to compare Chateau Orleans to Gustaf Anders or 926 simply because they once occupied the same premises. Nor is there any other basis upon which to make a comparison, because although Chateau Orleans is an expensive restaurant of some pretension, it does not appear to have a very clear sense of what it wants to be, or of the direction in which it intends to take its guests. Gustaf Anders and 926 always projected self-assured images; they also always made their culinary intentions sparklingly clear.

Chateau Orleans does state quite clearly at the top of the menu that it serves “ Nouvelle /Cajun” cuisine, but a perusal of the list of dishes leaves one wondering whether the intent is to serve nouvelle and Cajun food, or Cajun food prepared according to nouvelle precepts. Perhaps the restaurant’s Canadian proprietor was influenced by the fact that the French name for New Orleans, the capital of Cajun country, is Nouvelle Orleans.

The key to the restaurant’s intent ought to be in the eating, and to an extent it is. Chef James Bailey once cooked aboard the Delta Queen, the luxury steamboat that plies the Mississippi, and it was on this job that he presumably made the acquaintance of traditional Louisiana cooking. Most recently, he cooked in the Neiman-Marcus dining room in Beverly Hills; this department store’s kitchen emphasizes the latest in trendy cuisine. Thus Chateau Orleans offers a few dishes that are traditional Cajun, a few that are new-style Cajun, and a few others that have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Cajun food but may have some relationship to nouvelle cuisine.

Bailey actually is a rather good cook; were he dealing with a more coherent menu there would be little about which to complain. His chicken and vegetable soup, for example, was as pretty to look at (clear soups, by their nature, rarely conform to any aesthetic intent) as it was pleasant to consume. Bailey similarly scored high marks with an unusual carpaccio salad that purists would scorn for its unorthodox technique, but which met the taste test with ease. After all, in cooking, the question always devolves to flavor.

Carpaccio, the Italian answer to steak tartar, consists of paper-thin shavings of raw beef filet, either dressed with capers, olive oil and shredded Parmesan cheese, or served with these condiments on the side. Bailey instead marinated the meat and then tossed it briefly into a hot saute pan so that, when placed atop a bed of mixed greens, it would contrast in temperature as well as flavor. Chopped scallions (a trademark of Cajun cuisine, although carpaccio is not even faintly Cajun), capers and a vinaigrette dressing finished the dish. It was imaginative and it tasted good. Also likable were the tiny, complimentary pastries filled with spicy smoked sausage that arrived with the first glass of wine.

An appetizer of shrimp, billed as being “served on a chilled bed of greens with two exotic sauces,” proved to be an ordinary seafood cocktail, the five large shrimp placed atop crushed ice in a tall glass server. The two exotic sauces were hardly that, one consisting merely of vinegar seasoned with a bit of dill, the other a red cocktail sauce made fiery--too explosively so--with the addition of Creole mustard and horseradish.

The entree list includes several meats “blackened” in the pyrotechnical technique developed by New Orleans chef Paul Prudhomme--stuffed quail, salmon baked in pastry with a garnish of caviar and dill, veal saltimbocca finished with cherry wine (this sounds rather frightening), rack of baby lamb in garlic sauce and a chicken breast stuffed with prosciutto ham and Gouda cheese, an Italian-Dutch marriage that sounds somewhat tenuous. It is hard to find a unifying note in this list.

There are two relatively inexpensive dishes, one of red beans and rice served with sausages, and the other a gumbo that includes unshelled shellfish. It was not sampled because it sounded messy, and in any case, traditional gumbo recipes call for shrimp and the like to be shelled before they are cooked.

“Blackened” foods have become so commonplace as to be cliches but it must be admitted that these seared-in-spices preparations do have merit when properly done. This seems obvious, given the speed with which the technique was adopted across the country. Chateau Orleans offers prime rib of beef done in this manner, as well as a pork chop that, in a way of tempering innovation with tradition, is accompanied by sauteed apples.

But blackened meat makes its most important appearance in what the menu oddly entitles the “ Nouvelle /Cajun Creation,” a combination of blackened filet mignon and sauteed tiger shrimp. The steak proved buttery, and not overly spiced or charred, but for some reason it was drenched in salt and thus unpalatable. The giant shrimp (not blackened, it should be made clear) looked nice on their bed of wilted spinach, and tasted rather good, too, but their effect was to make the plate into a kind of 1986 surf ‘n’ turf combination.

The stunning element on the plate was the pile of perfectly cooked, perfectly delicious carrots, which seemed to owe much of their zest to an inspired dose of cardamom. It may seem odd to rave about carrots, but then, how often are carrots truly terrific? Bailey has a nice touch overall with vegetables and the entree plate also included a tasty melange of julienned onions and peppers.

One dish that had the genuine old-fashioned Cajun flavor (a murky, muddy blend of nuances that comes from letting ingredients swap flavors while slowly sweating in a deep, heavy pot) was a dish of fettuccine dressed with a creamy seafood sauce. Scallops, shrimp, sea bass and other sea foods mingled in this lightly spiced, highly flavored sauce, and it was a good dish.

Still, one has to wonder at a restaurant that puts forth such effort in certain areas and then imports its desserts, including the pecan pie, from a Los Angeles caterer. And as a final complaint, it seems somewhat declasse for a restaurant in this price category (and one that retained the pretty decor installed by 926) to place sheets of glass over the linen tablecloths. There is something ungracious in this action.

CHATEAU ORLEANS

926 Turquoise St., San Diego

488-6744

Dinner served 6-10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, 5:30-10:30 p.m. weekends.

Credit cards accepted.

Dinner for two, with a moderate bottle of wine, tax and tip, $35 to $80.