Milligan’s Does It With Mirrors but There’s No Trick to Its Food

Restaurateurs, just like other types of business people, often have mottoes by which they conduct their professional lives. These little sayings can be revealing, and my favorite was uttered by a man who, much to the benefit of the local food scene, departed the county about seven years ago.

“The customers have money in their pockets, and we must learn to pick those pockets,” he said. This philosophy pushed one of the area’s best restaurants into a nose dive from which it took several years to recover.

Jim Milligan, whose brand-new Milligan’s on La Jolla Boulevard makes him the newest kid on the restaurant block, puts his philosophy right where every patron can see it--on the inside of the matchbook covers (his caricature adorns the covers themselves).

His motto is simple and hard to dispute: “It’s my life. I live it. I love it. Criticism be damned.”

This sort of statement is most easily made by a man whose successes in other types of businesses allow him to approach a restaurant venture as something other than a make-or-break proposition. Milligan is this sort of man, but he insists that Milligan’s is an endeavor as serious as any he has entered, and definitely not a toy.

The reassuring point about all this is that Milligan stands as the classic host, the man on the scene whose establishment, food and service reflect his own tastes, and who takes full responsibility for the satisfaction (or dissatisfaction) of his guests. A character such as he would be a marketing director’s dream, but the marketing man would be interested only in promoting an illusion. Milligan is quite real, and his restaurant is uniquely his own.

Milligan remodeled the ramshackle building that once housed the Sea Thief into a flashy, rather luxurious restaurant that looks much like a classy bordello. A collection of nudes, some quite provocative, line the walls, and several women guests have pointed out that the mirrored ceilings make wearing a low-cut dress a proposition to be approached with both eyes wide open. It’s different, and it’s all very enjoyable. Nudes and mirrors aside, guests are seated in deep, comfortable banquettes that offer a fair degree of privacy (except from above), and the table appointments are handsome.

This is in some ways an old-fashioned restaurant--despite the flashiness, it seems quite solid and respectable, like a place that will last--and one item that is reminiscent of the dining rooms of the 1950s is the organ in the lounge. Played more or less constantly (and sometimes to the vocal accompaniment of Milligan’s daughter, who is also the hostess), the organ gives a lively bounce to the place. It also happens to be the very instrument that Danny Topaz played at Padres games; Milligan snatched it up when the baseball club installed a newer and fancier model.

The food comes as a great surprise. Advance notice had described Milligan’s as a steak house, but this billing does only partial justice to the bill of fare. In any case, the cooking generally is excellent.

The menu’s biggest surprise may be the Southern pan fried chicken, listed as the house specialty and prepared with a flair that brings to mind how good fried chicken can be. Mainstream restaurants abandoned this dish a couple of decades ago, when Colonel Sanders and his flock made chicken into a cheap fast-food specialty with which more formal eateries could not compete.

Served hot, golden, juicy, crisply crusted and in quantity, Milligan’s fried chicken is quite a bird. Traditional accompaniments fill out the plate, including real mashed potatoes that actually taste like potatoes, a creamy gravy, and fluffy biscuits with honey. It should be beyond the capabilities of the average guest to finish this plate in one sitting.

Mentioning the chicken first is rather like putting the cart before the horse (or the chicken before the egg?), because a generous selection of foods precedes the entrees to the table. Among the most interesting of these is the iced relish tray, a real throwback to the old days that includes such nibbles as carrot sticks, radishes and pickled peppers. Meals also include a salad, tossed at the table, of good greens moistened with any of several dressings. The chunky blue cheese would seem to be the best bet; the oil and vinegar is overly bland.

The menu does offer quite a few appetizers, none outrageously exciting, but those sampled were good. The kitchen seems somewhat addicted to Orientalia--real and ersatz--in this department, and serves up Japanese gyoza (fried meat dumplings) and crab Rangoon (fried won tons stuffed with a tasty cream cheese and crab mixture) with equal aplomb. The fried shrimp balls, or ground shrimp mixed with chopped water chestnuts, were tough and tasteless. Other choices include sauteed artichoke hearts simmered in white wine, mushrooms in red wine, an oven-baked whole onion, chili, and the pasta of the day. The pasta, also offered as an entree, evidently allows the chef to satisfy some latent nouvelle longings, because the choices range well beyond Milligan’s country-style theme. One recent offering involved green peppercorn linguine tossed with clams and sun-dried tomatoes.

The entree list offers much besides steak, although steak admittedly is its raison d’etre. The chicken pot pie, baked under a homemade crust, sounds good, although there was no opportunity to try it. “Manale’s style” shrimp, a Cajun recipe that Milligan’s could as well do without, was the kitchen’s one notable failure; grilled in their shells under an awesome coating of crushed peppercorns, the shrimp served only as a vehicle for the peppers. Their own flavor was entirely muted. The fish of the day, on one visit Hawaiian ahi, was carved into a generous steak, broiled to a moist turn, and finished with a dollop of red pepper butter that neither added to nor detracted from the fish.

The cuts of beef require relatively little description, because they are the tender, flavorful, expertly cooked meats that for so long made the steak or prime rib dinner the ultimate expression of American gourmandism. A filet mignon seemed inclined to yield to the lightest touch of a fork, and the same remark could be made about the buttery, excellently flavored roast prime rib.

The side dishes added much to the pleasure of the steaks and other entrees. Meats are served with a choice of good french fries, mashed potatoes, or “custom stuffed” baked Idahoes that the servers dress at table with the guest’s choice of condiments. The plates also include a vegetable or two, and a bowl of fine creamed corn is passed from guest to guest.

The sheer size of these meals would seem to obviate dessert, but Milligan’s offers several anyway, including a good homemade sherbet and a relatively light bread pudding finished with an excellent whiskey sauce. This last would be the dessert of choice, and can easily be shared by two guests.

MILLIGAN’S

5786 La Jolla Blvd., La Jolla

459-7311.

Dinner served 5:30-10 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, 4-9 p.m. Sunday. Closed Mondays.

Credit cards accepted.

Dinner for two, including a moderate bottle of wine, tax and tip, $40 to $70.