Vic’s Follows the Trend : Steaks Stage Comeback at Restaurants in S.D.

A new catch phrase has been circulating for a year or so among Southern California’s chefs and restaurateurs.

The saying , which packs a real wallop to those in the business, runs: “Everybody is talking fish . . . but eating beef.”

Beef, as in a nice steak or slab of prime rib, became unfashionable several years ago among the more visible members of the food community. Restaurant critics can take their share of blame/credit for this fact, as can newspaper food sections, and magazines aimed at “foodies.” Health organizations that frown on cholesterol also contributed to beef’s public fall from grace.

As beef lost its cachet, fish became ascendant, at least in print and conversation. The better restaurateurs rose to meet the occasion by downplaying the role of steaks on their menus, and offering as great a variety of seafoods as possible. However, it seems that in reality, red meat has continued to be quite a hot item, and like any sort of merchant, restaurant owners are going to offer the goods that sell best.

Have we seen the end of fish dinners? Hardly. But it does seem that at least in San Diego, 1986 may come to be known as “Anno Bove Redux” (“The Year the Cow Returned.”)

Two years ago, the only top-line or deluxe steak house (as in New York’s fabled Palm) to be found in the county was Remington’s in Del Mar. The quality at this restaurant is excellent, the meals lavish but extremely pricey, and the clientele immense.

But now we have La Jolla’s new Vic’s, which has borrowed a page or two from Remington’s textbook, as has downtown San Diego’s Rainwater’s, which opened in January; also new and grand, although as yet unreviewed here, is the Gaslamp Quarter’s Prime Cut. Early November will witness the opening of Milligan’s on La Jolla Boulevard, which promises to be a steak palace on a major scale, and the Sheraton Grand (until recently known as the Sheraton Harbor Island West), plans to convert its Chambrette dining room into a steak house called Spencer’s by mid-January.

Vic’s certainly hopes to capitalize on the traditional passion for red meat served in great quantity. In fact, it serves everything in great quantity, and does so with great style, although, amid all this greatness, it could be debated whether Vic’s necessarily is a great restaurant. Certainly, at least, the prices are great, if the word is taken in the sense of the Great Wall of China.

Located in La Jolla’s new Merrill Lynch Building, Vic’s is the sibling of the already popular Fisherman’s Grill, with which it shares not only the ground floor of the structure, but the impressive management team of Jack Monaco and Nita Steinberg. The dining room offers the expected clubby/masculine feel via the simple color scheme, massive booths and well-spaced tables, but it also aims for luxury by offering truly lovely floral arrangements, and such amenities as baskets of linen towels in the restrooms. Best of all, the kitchen is ruled by Jim Hill, a man who holds tenure in the top rank of the county’s chefs.

The menu is strictly a la carte ; vegetables, side dishes and such cost extra. Many mid-price restaurants continue to recognize the popularity of including soup or salad in the price of the entree, but the practice is dying among higher-priced places, and Vic’s seems eager to rush this habit to the grave. The price, for two guests, of a three-course meal that includes a medium-priced bottle of wine, tax and tip, easily can exceed $100.

The menu is very nice, as long as one likes solid luxury. The appetizer list naturally offers a jumbo shrimp cocktail as well as broiled oysters on the half shell, a smoked fish plate, and a dish of shrimp cooked with tomatoes and feta cheese that is borrowed from the neighboring Fisherman’s Grill. However, the cheapest starter choice may be the best; this is the sweet potato soup, a genuinely entrancing puree of sweet sweet potatoes made savory by the addition of bacon. The first course of the day can be excellent, too, as in a recent saute of sweetbreads placed over a bed of wilted (cooked only until tender and toothsome) spinach. A light but intense sauce of brown stock, Madeira and butter finished the serving, which in bulk easily could have doubled as an entree.

Bulk? One guest, after gaping at his side dish of carrots with fresh ginger (vegetables and potatoes cost $3 per serving), commented that the portion was sufficient to serve four guests. The carrots were good, but really, why serve so much? In any case, the average twosome should find one order of vegetable and one of potato to be more than sufficient. The “twice baked,” or mashed and stuffed, potato, is rather nice, but the side dish of choice would have to be the skinny fried onion rings garnished with sweet potato chips.

The entrees include 14-ounce and 20-ounce portions of prime rib, fresh Maine lobster (priced by weight), a fish of the day, liver with onions, pork chops, a daily meat special, and steaks, steaks, steaks. There is a top sirloin for four (this sounds reasonable, priced at $39.95); a “Kolbi baseball” top sirloin, a fatless cut of meat that is shaped just as it sounds, and that the kitchen prefers to serve extremely rare; a New York sirloin, and--Vic’s wouldn’t be a steak house without one--a porterhouse.

The majority of steaks undergo nothing more than a simple grilling before being presented in their massive glory, but George’s Filet of Beef, as the menu calls it, is somewhat more complicated. Thickly coated on top with cracked black peppercorns, it is sauteed, and doused with a light sauce of the pan juices deglazed with brandy and (interestingly) lemon juice. The sauce, correctly served in small quantity, just as a moistener, worked nicely. The meat, Angus beef from the Midwest, was without fault in itself, but the coating of peppercorns was far too generous, and had to be scraped away before the steak could be savored.

The easy winner of the entree sweepstakes was the evening’s meat special, a roasted, double-sized chop of the tenderest, most buttery veal imaginable, cooked medium-rare and moistened with a light Madeira sauce similar to the one that accompanied the sweetbread appetizer. One could not ask much more of veal chop than this one offered. The plate did include a minor garnish of several bulbs of roasted shallot, a savory, piquant condiment and an imaginative touch.

Not too surprisingly, the hand that dishes up desserts is a generous hand, and a serving of the best sweet, the wonderfully rich, homemade chocolate mousse flavored with orange, should be plenty for two diners. Other desserts are catered, and a thin chocolate torte filled with truffle-like ganache is quite agreeable, if also extremely rich.

Vic’s

7825 Fay Ave., La Jolla

456-3789

Dinner served nightly.

Credit cards accepted.