THE SOUTH RISES AGAIN IN FULLERTON

My Southern grandmother, who was actually born--against her wishes, I’m sure--in San Bernardino rather than Virginia, was nevertheless Southern to the bone, Southern in every vice and virtue. Early on, I noticed that a lot of her virtues had to do with food. She always had a fine hand with pies and chicken and would sooner have slit her throat than serve a cold biscuit.

I grew up as fond of her cooking as I was wary of her humors, and I understand the unique enthusiasm Southerners have for their own cuisine. Even at its greasiest and starchiest, it has savor and personality. How odd that this part of what we sometimes call the Southland, to which so many emigres from that other Southland back east have moved, presents such a narrow spectrum of Southern cooking in its restaurants. Lots of barbecue, of course, but only one “Kentucky” version of fried chicken; here and there a whiff of the crab cookery of the Chesapeake Bay, and in the last couple of years a profoundly confused vision of Louisiana food.

A brand-new restaurant in Fullerton called J. E. B. Stuart’s Country Manor essays to fill this gap. Needless to say, it exudes antebellum style. Fans revolve languidly in the ceiling. Waitresses in long gray skirts and waiters with string ties walk around in a surprising number of dining rooms done in slate blue or tiny floral print wallpaper. The place is named for the hero of Chancellorsville (you don’t know about Chancellorsville? Grandmother could recite what happened there every minute of the battle) and there are several prints of James Ewell Brown (OK, call him Jeb) Stuart in his famous plumed hat spotted around the walls of the restaurant.

Enough. What about the food? Well, the menu has barbecue and some Louisiana dishes--respectable versions, not the bizarre guesswork of so many local restaurants--and quite a few Southern touches, like honey butter with the hot corn bread and an interesting rice pilaf containing onions, celery, bay leaf and what looks and tastes like fried thyme.

And they make the best Southern fried chicken I’ve had in a California restaurant. Well, OK, it’s the most like my grandmother’s. The layer of batter is thin and fried quite brown, meaning there’s scarcely any of the doughy, underdone batter that spoils a lot of fried chicken.

But this place is not engaged in a missionary effort and makes many a bow to Californians’ restaurant expectations. There’s a salad bar (with decent potato salad, negligible pasta salad and a sparse choice of stuff to put on your lettuce) and the nightly special dishes tend to sound continental rather than Confederate. Dessert is marked by an absence, whenever I’ve asked, of either pecan or peach pie, to say nothing of chess pie, cobbler or anything else particularly Southern.

To the appetizers. The crab cakes are flat little things and a bit oily, but they taste Southern to me, as if the cook grew up with a frying pan in his hand. They come, like the less interesting “Cajun popcorn” deep-fried shrimp, both with a conventional cocktail sauce and a blazing hot liquid that could be Crystal hot pepper sauce straight from the bottle. Two appetizers that might get overlooked are pretty good: mushroom tart (a tartlet shell heaped up with mushrooms sauteed in cream) and fried zucchini with a sort of ranch dressing.

The appetizer of creole scallops is an initiation to the entrees to follow, because creole shrimp, creole chicken (at lunch), jambalaya and gumbo are very much alike with their basis of tomato, celery, bell pepper and rice. If there’s a roux in the gumbo, I can’t tell; otherwise the dishes are distinguished by whether they contain shrimp or chicken, sausage and ham (the jambalaya) or vegetables (the gumbo, although there’s a fancier gumbo called “lagniappe” with chicken and shellfish added).

The barbecue is OK, not terribly smoky and served with an extremely mild but attractive sauce based on tomato paste and honey. The Virginia ham tastes like Farmer John’s to me, but the pineapple topping and sugar sauce are like Grandma’s. The prime rib, unexpectedly, is one of the best things here. You can get it either straight, with a distinct implication that you must be a Yankee, or “Johnny Reb” style, meaning with a simple and appealing dose of hot pepper on it. The meat is extremely tender and beefy.

Grandma would have a thing or two to say about the desserts. Carrot cake she might have accepted; nice cinnamony carrot cake with a hard frosting, the outside armored with a coating of crushed pecans. Maybe the praline-flavored cheesecake, too, but certainly not the Irish cream cheesecake (although it is luscious) or the chocolate ganache (that Orange County specialty), and I shudder to think what she’d say about the apple tart with its stodgy, European crust.

It’s worth coming just for the chicken, Creole dishes and prime rib, though, and on weekend nights you hear pretty good bluegrass coming from the bar (a rough-hewn room with a huge representation of the Confederate flag on the wall). Appetizers run $3.95-$7.95 and entrees $9.95-$17.95.

J. E. B. STUART’S COUNTRY MANOR 1933 Sunnycrest Drive, Fullerton

(714) 871-0541

Open for lunch Monday to Friday, for dinner daily. American Express and MasterCard accepted.