SURPRISES IN THE OTHER VALLEY

To most Angelenos, the Santa Clarita Valley is probably just a vast housing tract briefly glimpsed from the Golden State Freeway as they approach Magic Mountain.

As the San Fernando Valley has filled up, this other Valley has undergone a spectacular housing boom for the overflow. It does have a life of its own, though. Silent-film cowboy star William S. Hart lived here and donated a park to the city of Newhall. It was also the site of a pioneer oil rush around the turn of the century, and an old oil rig still stands for the inspection of the curious.

Contrary to popular opinion, restaurants do not die out north of the San Fernando Valley like mussels above the intertidal zone. True, much of the Santa Clarita Valley is raw new suburbs, chain-restaurant territory, but there are surprising French restaurants to be found.

Vincent Hill Station is the most unexpected of these places--the farthest from Gastronomic Los Angeles, but probably the best. It’s located at a deserted crossroads in Acton, the gateway to Palmdale, and can be a little hard for an outsider to find. You have to remember to take the second Soledad Canyon exit from Highway 14--the first one involves you in a scenic 20-mile drive through the colorful back-country trailer parks of the Santa Clarita Valley.

The place itself is the former Vincent Hill railway station (elevation: 3,345 feet), complete with its huge old stone fireplace and numerous bleak photos of this area when it was even more remote from the world 50-70 years ago. It’s a tiny place, just about 20 tables plus the loud bar, and impressively busy on weekends.

It’s also impressively sophisticated for this neck of the woods. The waitress explains that the owner, a native Actonite, owns restaurants in the San Fernando Valley. This may explain the escargots served without the gimmickry of snail shells or special tools, the smooth and rich liver pate with a nice peppery bite, the deep-fried mozzarella, chicken marinated in lime juice, the classically smooth and buttery bordelaise sauce on the New York steak. Everything comes, alas, with overdone carrots.

There’s even a wine list with a little sophistication. Desserts include a nice cocoa-flavored chocolate mousse cake and a strawberry Napoleon probably made with filo dough rather than puff paste, stiff and full of air.

Vincent Hill Station, 553 W. Sierra Highway, Acton , (805) 272-4799. Open for lunch and dinner daily. American Express, MasterCard and Visa accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $25-$65.

Le Chene is a surprisingly good restaurant in the middle of nowhere, nine miles past Soledad Canyon on Sierra Highway. It’s an old stone building with cactus plants out front, lovers’ names carved in the flesh as if on a tree trunk. (There are live oaks around too, of course--Le Chene means the oak .) Seven years ago, it was a classic biker bar, but then it was bought by a chef named Juan Alonso, who has decorated this building, so redolent of the barren, deserty Southern California of 50 years ago, with cheery French curtains and paintings.

This is an unusually traditional French menu, old-fashioned enough to list nearly forgotten dishes like beef tongue in vinaigrette, lamb chops a l’ail and peach Melba. When it does try to be more contemporary, the results are mixed. Duck with rum and pineapple is a little like an entree mixed up with a Polynesian cocktail.

Le Chene is a quite serious restaurant. Alonso actually raises his own boars, and the best thing on the menu is the boar goulash (actually what they’d call a porkolt in Hungary): pork cooked in onions and hot paprika and not much else, served with pureed turnips on the side. Sometimes there is alligator stew as well (he does not raise his own alligators, though). You get the odd feeling he puts these fearsome things on the menu to keep the bikers from seizing the place back.

Le Chene, 12625 W. Sierra Highway, Saugus, (805) 251-4315. Open for lunch and dinner daily. All major credit cards accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $36-$60.

Le Crocodile Bistro, probably the best-known restaurant in the Santa Clarita Valley, is tucked into a shopping center in Newhall, two blocks east of the Golden State Freeway. Its decor combines an Art Deco bar, a hint of Mission Style in the arch looking into the kitchen and faintly Japanese wooden dowels on the walls (or was the place an exercise studio before and the stall bars were never taken down?).

The menu is a combination of ‘50s French, dishes like sole almondine (rather bland sole in cream sauce with toasted almond slices), together with the odd item from the avant-garde of the ‘70s like pasta primavera or beefsteak with both black and green peppercorns. There are nice touches--pureed yams, a homey side dish of fried mashed potatoes flavored with pepper and chives--and fancy ones, like the swan concocted out of choux paste in which the tarragon-flavored mousse de volaille is served.

In other words, it has the feeling of a brave outpost, a place where the waiter works hard to sell you on the exotic idea of duck in a timid Calvados sauce. It tends to over-salt things, too, notably the mousse and the escargots. There is, however, a good buttery triple chocolate cake topped with shaved chocolate.

Le Crocodile Bistro, 24246 Lyons Ave., Valencia, (818) 362-6341 or (805) 255-8181. Open for lunch Monday through Friday, for dinner Monday through Saturday. All major credit cards accepted. Dinner for two, $30-$50.

The Blue Moon is a true oddity. Located in the almost nonexistent town of Castaic Junction in an old building that suggests both Pagan Polynesia and Old California Stage Stop (in the bar an electric train runs along a ledge around the walls), it features Cajun, Continental, surf & turf and Mexican dishes, and the menu begins with a long list of savage Polynesian rum drinks.

Odd, but the Santa Clarita Valley loves it. The Blue Moon really pulls in the business suits at lunch. It’s gourmet central.

However, it is gourmet in the way an Angeleno most fears will be attempted in the outback. The espresso is premade, warmed up to order. The chicken gumbo has a correct dark Cajun roux , but like the jambalaya it tries to get along without celery or bell peppers. The “Cajun shrimpettes” (precisely named, these shrimpettes) come in a pool of oil, at the very bottom of which there is a taste of garlic and hot peppers. Chicken Kiev seems puffed up with air rather than butter. The vegetables are likely to be peas cooked to mush and a slice of canteloupe on lettuce.

The Blue Moon does a lot better with its desserts and those colorful Polynesian drinks; it’s the kind of place where the mud pie runs about eight inches tall. There’s also a good cheesecake with thick sour cream frosting.

The Blue Moon, 28745 The Old Road, Valencia (Castaic Junction), (805) 257-1300. Open for lunch Monday through Saturday, for dinner nightly. All major credit cards accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $28-$52.