Manhattan Shows Promise; Service Is Already a Step Ahead of Most

It long has been a commonly held maxim that, when entering an untried French restaurant, a useful safety device is to order and taste the soup du jour before selecting the rest of the meal. Should the soup make the grade, it is likely that the rest of the repast will be satisfactory; the reverse also can be assumed with some degree of confidence.

The soup caveat applies less to Italian restaurants, at least in this country, because few place much emphasis on soups. In an Italian restaurant of any pretense, however, it is useful to order the calamari appetizer, should one be offered, because it is relatively easy to prepare, and, if done badly, gives an excellent warning that the kitchen probably takes few of its tasks seriously. The dish should be made with fresh, tiny squid, lightly seasoned, dipped in either flour or bread crumbs, and fried to a pleasing, gilded crispness. A soggy calamari is the sign of a careless cook; a properly crusty one promises that the kitchen staff, at the very least, is not totally lacking in talent.

One cannot argue at all with the calamari served at Manhattan, a newly minted La Jolla restaurant of considerable pretension that shows a fair amount of promise, some of it as yet unrealized. Sweet, golden, crunchy little mouthfuls, the squid arrive heaped on a platter garnished with lemon wedges and a boat of what the menu too modestly calls “a zesty cocktail sauce.” This last really is a minor triumph and has nothing to do with the usual chili sauce-horseradish mixture of shrimp cocktail fame; served hot, the sauce instead is a spicy blend of strained tomatoes seasoned with much garlic and a fine blending of herbs.

Manhattan is one of those restaurants that does better with some dishes than others. By and large, the seafood offerings, whether in the appetizer, pasta or entree departments, seem quite sound. Other choices vary, and a steak specialty, named after no lesser a personality than Old Blue Eyes himself, needs to be sent back to the drawing board.

It is a most interesting place, especially for anyone who has some familiarity with the grander Italian restaurants of New Jersey, Philadelphia and Long Island. Although named in honor of the Big Apple, the restaurant has a less flighty, more suburban solidity to it. It seems very much of this earth, but very little of this state; the service is seasoned and marvelous, the decor, refreshingly, the antithesis of Southern California greenery-cum-pastels.

Manhattan occupies ground floor premises in the new Empress Hotel, an impressively remodeled hostelry that in its most recent incarnation was known as Hotel La Jolla. The restaurant is under separate management, however, and is run by a pair of restaurateurs who formerly were in the business in Brooklyn and suburban Chicago. The decor is intense and Eastern, the walls brick and the spacious banquettes separated by large aquariums populated by interesting sea creatures. It is neither unusual nor unsettling to glance over one’s shoulder and find an eel staring back. With the brick walls and the aquatic ambiance, the general feel of the place is not unlike that of New York’s Fulton Fish Market on a particularly polite day.

All this fishiness makes the menu’s large selection of seafood offerings unsurprising, although Manhattan should not be considered a seafood restaurant. A great deal of space on the menu is given over to beef and veal listings, and chicken and duck also take bows, if somewhat tentatively.

The restaurant scores points with its appetizers; besides the most agreeable squid, the kitchen did quite well with the baked oysters Francois and the seafood ravioli. The oysters (two toothy little bivalves were buddied up in each of three large shells) were thickly covered with a meaty hash of shredded crab and shrimp, then sprinkled with Parmesan cheese and baked until crusty. To give this dish both a smooth finish and the Gallic accent required by its name, a good hollandaise sauce was spread over the crust. The ravioli featured a similar melange of shellfish, encased in a tender noodle dough and set adrift in a lake of rich cream sauce.

The a la carte menu requires that soup or salad be ordered separately, if desired, but the waiters warn against these if an appetizer has been chosen because portions are far from modest. The house salad proved most unremarkable; the spinach salad with hot bacon dressing, composed at the table, looked properly concocted when prepared for a neighboring party. The menu emphasizes the Boston clam chowder, which beats the usual San Diego version by a good margin, but would be better were it more lightly textured.

The pasta list makes several intriguing suggestions, including the vegetarian rotelli Puttanesca, or spiral-shaped pasta tossed with an uncooked sauce of fresh tomatoes, basil, olive oil and garlic. A dish of vermicelli mixed with bay shrimp, scallops, clams and a light tomato sauce featured that clear, fresh, intense flavor of the sea that Italian cooks seem especially adept at producing.

The veal list offers scallopini alla Marsala, Francese, piccata , Sorrentina, Valdostana and--probably because the impulse to be French is easily satisfied in this case--in the “Oscar” style that calls for a garnish of asparagus, crabmeat and sauce bearnaise. The saltimbocca , one of the two classic veal dishes of American-Italian restaurant cookery (the other would be veal Parmigiana), was good, but not great. The required flavor of fresh sage was most definitely present, and the prosciutto ham garnish generously apportioned, but the sauce elaborated from the pan juices and Marsala wine seemed to lack something. In addition, the morsels arrived topped with melted mozzarella cheese, a lily-gilding not called for by traditional recipes, and one that did little for the dish.

Filet mignon and New York strip steaks, generally broiled over charcoal, are offered in preparations of greater and lesser complexity. The Steak Sinatra, listed as “filet mignon sliced and sauteed in onions, green peppers and mushrooms,” did little credit to the crooner for whom it is named, the meat being most noticeably tough, the sauce crying loudly for garlic.

The guest who ordered this steak had his equanimity restored by a taste of his partner’s scallops au gratin, a simple dish of scallops baked with a covering of a light but flavorful cream sauce. Fresh Parmesan cheese was offered at the table, and it added that little indefinable something that always raises a dish above the realm of the ordinary.

All entrees, including the steak, were served with a mixture of carrots, cauliflower and broccoli, simply steamed until tender. Although the vegetables came off well, a bit of potato or rice would have been welcome with the meat entrees.

The quality of the desserts is in sync with that of the rest of the menu, some far exceeding others. The rum cake can and should be ignored--there was no rum in the slice sampled--but the cannoli obviously had been made by someone who knew the art of Italian pastry making. The “apples” (with little leaves poised on top, they looked quite like real fruit), made of mint and chocolate ice creams encased in bittersweet chocolate, were delightful.

Manhattan’s service staff doubtless will become the envy of other local restaurateurs, because it is composed of mature representatives of the old school who not only know how to serve, but find doing it properly important. They do not introduce themselves by name, saying, “If you want anything, just ask for me” (this remark, frequently uttered by local surfer-servers, implies that the waiter will not be on hand when needed). Instead, the Manhattan waiters anticipate requirements and do their job with a grace almost unknown in these parts.

This restaurant, by and large, is on the expensive side. A couple that ordered pasta and a glass of wine would spend no more than $30, including tax and tip, but a two or three-course meal can elevate the tab to $70 or more.

MANHATTAN

7766 Fay Ave. (in the Empress Hotel), La Jolla

454-1182

Dinner served nightly.

Credit cards accepted.