Cafe Biarritz Serves Up French Cooking, Bistro Style and Memorable

Ernest Hemingway wrote about the area that surrounds Biarritz, a small resort town on the Atlantic in extreme southwestern France, in “The Sun Also Rises.” A chic playground for both the rich and the would-be rich, Biarritz is an easy journey from Hemingway’s beloved Pamplona, the Spanish Basque city in which the running of the bulls remains an annual tradition.

A new North County restaurant, Cafe Biarritz, pays respectable homage to the place for which it is named. It, too, is in a quiet coastal town--Encinitas--that lies near a Spanish-speaking land. More importantly, it offers excellent French bistro cooking, the sort that is one step below that of truly grand restaurants, but still surpasses that served at most places, especially here in San Diego County.

This certainly is a contemporary restaurant. One would be tempted to say that the decor--or lack thereof--mimics the neutral shades of the beaches that give Biarritz its fame and popularity. But more likely, the sparse, almost ascetic decor refers to the wildly understated style in vogue from coast to coast. A few abstract paintings enliven the great expanses of white walls, and there are fresh daisies on the tables; otherwise the eye is forced to concentrate on nothing more than the simple neon rings that encircle a central pillar and serve as a focus for the dining room.

Perhaps the lack of decoration is intended to draw attention to the open kitchen, where much worthwhile activity takes place. It is here that talented cooks prepare the stylish entrees and beautiful desserts that make a visit to Cafe Biarritz such an enjoyable experience.

The standing menu has much to recommend it, but, as at so many good French restaurants, it is the list of daily specials that lifts the place into its superior category. This list recently included a salad of fresh goose foie gras ( foie gras is fowl liver that has been made especially large and succulent through a special feeding process) that, put simply, was an absolute delight.

The rich texture and remarkably intense flavor of foie gras is such that, eaten by itself, it is considered one of the premier luxuries of the French table. But served warm, and combined with tender-crisp green beans and asparagus spears, as it was at Cafe Biarritz, it becomes a thing of unusual beauty. A substantial portion, the medallions of pan-crisped liver were dressed with oil and a little lemon, and surrounded by a wreath of tender artichoke leaves and a wealth of meaty chanterelle mushrooms. The plate cost $9, and it was worth every penny.

None of the menu’s other first choices could compete with this, but most nonetheless have merit. Especially likable was a creamed crayfish soup (cream being the operative word here, since this was not a bisque) that arrived hot, rich and redolent of that deluxe ecrevisse flavor, under a dome of nicely browned puff pastry. A couple of untried choices that sound interesting would be the salmon carpaccio, or marinated raw salmon garnished with cucumbers, avocado and red onion, and the mussels steamed in white wine, shallots and butter.

The menu also offers several pastas and pizzas, the latter falling into that modern class that ignores Neapolitan tradition in favor of such combinations as Black Forest and prosciutto hams with tomatoes and a confite (jam, more or less) of shallots, and mixed shellfish with red and yellow bell peppers. For those self-confident diners who do not believe that status is conferred by the strangeness of the foods one orders, there is a plain old tomato-and-basil pizza that sounds rather nice.

The standing entree list is quite respectable on its own, and the selection of daily specials in this case only makes ordering that much more difficult. The standing list ranges from the creamy familiarity of creamed crayfish and scallops in puff pastry to the nouvelle challenge of crisply finished roast duck garnished with corn crepes and a sweet and sour sauce.

In addition to these dishes, the standing list offers an excellent marinated breast of chicken, grilled over mesquite and served painted with a simple but piquant sauce. The kitchen pays considerable attention to presentation--evidently, the cooks do not subscribe to the interior decorator’s view that austerity is everything--and the plate is lovely, the sliced chicken breast stretched into an elongated fan. For garnish, the plate is completed with a carefully arranged pancake of oven-browned potato slices, and a superb, flower-cut Japanese eggplant that has had braised tomatoes and onions inserted between its petals.

The same eggplant creation finished a skewer of cubed lamb and onions, which after grilling was sauced with a suave, wonderfully sophisticated blend of garlic and Roquefort cheese. A stack of tiny, baby asparagus spears, obviously fresh and most unexpected in this season, were the second, perfect garnish on this plate.

The specials list veers, unsurprisingly, toward seafood, because it is in this department that the daily market offers a chef the most surprises. A special of John Dory, lightly gilded in hot butter and finished with a buttery coulis (a creamed and highly seasoned puree) of crayfish tails, was particularly successful. The kitchen’s penchant for decoration in this case expressed itself in the garnish of whole crayfish, their tails neatly peeled in anticipation of the knife and fork, surrounding the flaky fish filet.

The dessert selection equals the other departments of the meal, with a marquise (here interpreted as a chocolate mousse loaf cake) weighing in as a respectable but inferior alternative to the fine, buttery apple tarte Tatin. The gold prize goes to a dessert of fresh strawberries encased in a sweet patty shell and drenched in a smooth caramel sauce.

Cafe Biarritz certainly is worth a visit, but be warned that its 1st Street address is somewhat misleading, if technically accurate. The restaurant is behind the building that bears the 1010 1st St. address, and is more easily located if one drives up 2nd Street, where the parking lot is.

CAFE BIARRITZ

1010 1st St., Encinitas

944-8490

Dinner served Tuesday through Sunday, closed Mondays.

Credit cards accepted.

Dinner for two, with a glass of house wine each, tax and tip, $30 to $70.