TOASTING THE GOOD OLD, BAD OLD DAYS

This is a recent conversation about Le Cellier, a restaurant now in its 18th year on Wilshire Boulevard in Santa Monica:

“It’s very good French bourgeois food,” said one friend.

“It really isn’t French bourgeois,” said another. “It’s what the French were eating 20 or so years ago, when French restaurants were becoming popular in the U.S. But the French middle class has gone on to simpler food, lots of grilled dishes. What you’re calling French bourgeois exists only here in the U.S.”

There is something so familiar about Le Cellier, the plush beige banquettes, the giant fake Ficus tree, the food served on the same beige plates it came on in Greenwich Village (or was it the Upper West Side?) years ago when, on your first trip to the big city, you tasted your first coq au vin, speared your first braised vegetable, felt for the first time like a citizen of the world.

Then, that rich stew, French bread, a glass of wine could be had for less than $10--or so you remember. Now, the food alone is double the price, but that includes soup and salad. So what if the puree of carrot soup isn’t spectacular? It’s nice and hot. A romaine salad drenched in too much, too-strong opaque vinaigrette also seems to bring on a certain nostalgia.

And speaking of nostalgia, there’s a bowl of good onion soup, the kind that comes in a crock with a bubbling, hard-as-rock cheese armor; a plump, crisp-skinned half duckling with a pleasant, sweet raspberry sauce, served with delicious little morsels of browned potatoes and crisp pea pods and carrots; a tender, white veal chop served with braised vegetables; chateaubriand in red wine sauce topped with white discs of bone marrow--cholesterol city, but worth the arterial risk. There are also specials: sweetbread with bearnaise sauce tonight, wild boar and chestnuts next week.

On a recent Tuesday night, Le Cellier toasted its 18th year. Guests were given a glass of good French Champagne along with their Grand Marnier or chocolate souffles, if they’d been foresighted enough to order souffle before dinner. This wasn’t Spago, but a cozy trip back to the less troubled times of yesterday, which maybe weren’t but seem that way.

A less rewarding time warp experience can be found a few doors east at Jack’s at the Beach, which really isn’t on the beach but used to be. Another old-timer, Jack’s is a black leatherette banquette retreat, a place to drink a Scotch before dinner, eat shrimp cocktail and watch the couple in the banquette across the way, he what used to be called a roue (pencil-thin mustache, slicked-back black hair), with an arm around a petite brunet in a black sheath.

They only had eyes for each other--or maybe they’d tasted the food and were in need of consolation. The whitefish was strictly take-it or leave-it; the baked potato was a sodden, discouraging thing; the abalone tasted like abalone always does (why do people keep ordering it?), like a rubber sink stopper that’s been battered and fried. But those complaints pale when it comes to the $6 bowl of strawberries they’re willing to foist off on patrons for dessert. These things, wooden, barely red, white inside, don’t even pretend to be ripe.

Le Cellier, 2628 Wilshire Blvd., Santa Monica. (213) 828-1585. Open for dinner only; closed Monday. Full bar. Visa, Mastercard, American Express. Dinner for two, food only, $35 to $60.

Jack’s at the Beach, 2700 Wilshire Blvd., Santa Monica. (213) 829-2846. Open for lunch Monday through Friday, for dinner nightly. Full bar. All major credit cards. Dinner for two, food only, $45 to $65.