Culinary Chaos Matches Glitzy Decor : Mixed Bag Pulled From the Menu at Fat City

Fat City, the bizarre-looking Pacific Highway landmark that is trimmed with enough neon to illuminate a small town, lately has been making efforts to establish itself as a serious practitioner of contemporary cuisine.

The most recent of these would be the hiring of executive chef Brian Ashe, who brought with him an impressive list of credits that includes a stint as executive chef at Los Angeles’ venerable Scandia. Ashe has teamed with corporate chef Lena Fat (the overlord of the Fat family’s kitchens here and in Sacramento) to write a menu that, for want of a more precise word, might as well be termed interesting .

This menu owes some of its character to the unique split personality of the establishment that houses it, because the flip side of Fat City is the China Camp dining room. This room features the cuisine--if one really would wish to call it that--developed by the Chinese immigrant laborers who helped tame the West in the late 19th Century. A bastardized style of cooking at best, it is rough-hewn and untidy, a gastronomic reference to the subtleties of Canton whipped up from commonplace American ingredients.

Given the fact that Fat City and China Camp share the same building and management, it should not be too surprising that several Chinese preparations are included in the Fat City menu. But this menu blithely crosses so many other gastronomic borders that the imagination is tempted to envision it as a kind of towering Cake of Babel, the first layer composed of Italian pastas, the second and third of various American regional dishes, with subsequent layers devoted to Mexican, Chinese and Japanese preparations, and, as frosting, a few dishes borrowed from the French.

This seeming culinary chaos goes hand-in-glove with the acclaimed visual chaos that is Fat City’s decor. With partitions made of glass panels that encase thousands of Ping Pong and tennis balls, and bowling ball-like vases on the tables, the place is unusual, to say the least. All this is heightened by a lavender and hot pink color scheme, lighted by colored neon, that plays interesting tricks on the eyes; strike a match, for example, and the flame will burn an unnatural greenish-yellow, quite different from its coloration in normal light.

However, since the proof resides in the pudding (or perhaps in the pie, since pudding is one dish that is not served here), it can be said that no matter the vagaries of the menu, the dishes sometimes come off rather well. By and large, the kitchen seems to have a good grasp of technique, although it does fall down at times.

As so often is the case in San Diego restaurants, a first meal left a rather bad impression, while a second try showed that Fat City is capable of producing good food.

This first meal started weakly with a shrimp appetizer, encased in a stiff corn masa dough, that could best be described as a tough tamale. Thanks to the rugged dough and the chili colorado (spicy red) sauce that finished the dish, the flavor of the shrimp stuffing was entirely submerged. The arrangement of the plate, however, strongly suggested that the kitchen is interested in the nouvelle/ Southwestern (the glorified cuisine of New Mexico, where fresh shrimp certainly are not a native ingredient) cooking that is all the rage.

A second appetizer, a plate of pot stickers, came direct from the Chinese side of Fat City’s personality. These savory, meat-filled dumplings weren’t bad, but were not the equal of those served at several of the city’s Chinese eateries; in any case, the presentation was sadly lacking in several points.

Also in debt (if rather unfortunately) to Fat City’s Chinese influence was the baby back rib entree, which the menu described as “marinated the Fat way, Chinese oven fired.” These ribs may or may not have been marinated, but in any case, the only flavor that came through was the extreme sweetness of the brown sugar with which they had been most generously glazed. Worse, they tasted as if they had been cooked well in advance and re-heated rather half-heartedly.

In a rather au courant mood, the menu includes an entree of purported “Louisiana-style” crab cakes, a dish that a diner who has spent at least his fair share of time in New Orleans restaurants has never encountered in the Crescent City. Padded out with corn meal in an effort to distinguish these from the genuine Maryland article, these crab cakes were, shall we say, dull. And why was there no lemon on the plate? Both entrees included generous vegetable garnishes, of which the salient element (here we are back in the Southwest, as seen through nouvelle spectacles) was a halved white eggplant spread with a thin and rather wimpy black bean sauce.

But happier eating was in store on a second visit when a more conservative approach to ordering led to a pleasant meal. This one started with a crusted onion soup of some authority, about which there was nothing nouvelle or precious, and a Caesar salad made according to the accepted--and tangy--prescription.

The dinner continued happily with the special fish of the evening, a grilled swordfish filet, garnished with capers, that had been cooked by someone who knew how to maintain the moistness of the fish. It was excellent. The same talented soul (when it comes down to the final analysis, technical virtuosity is the key to good cooking) probably was responsible for a lovely chicken piccata, also finished with a light caper sauce, that was ever so much more moist and delicate than the usual restaurant fowl.

Another fortunate entree was the “hobo” steak, a simple saute of sliced flank steak smothered in onions. The flavors were earthy and direct, the quality of the meat good. Instead of the vegetable garnish that accompanies other entrees, this plate included a mound of wonderfully thin and crisp shoestring potatoes, which suited the meat ever so much better that would have a cute eggplant spread with bean sauce.

The dessert list wisely stays within the bounds of the familiar, and is quite likeable. The key lime pie tasted of the tart, almost sour Florida limes that are not easily obtained in these parts, and was a smooth example of the classic American cream pie. A white chocolate cheesecake was equally nice, the flavor refined and subtle, the graham cracker crust agreeably grainy between the teeth.

Fat City

2137 Pacific Highway, San Diego

232-0686

Dinner served nightly.

Credit cards accepted.

Dinner for two, including a modest bottle of wine, tax and tip, $35 to $55.