Play It Again, Vic’s: Menu Is Revised, Prices Lowered

The famous waiter’s nightmare, suffered by millions over the centuries, makes the victim the sole server in a cavernous restaurant packed to overflowing with ravenous, clamorous guests.

This is not a pretty picture, but the restaurateur’s nightmare, the obverse of the coin, can be even more chilling. The unfortunate restaurateur stares out at his vast establishment jammed with staff members whose salaries are adding up by the hour, but there are no customers.

The server rarely, if ever, encounters his nightmare in the flesh, but restaurateurs and empty eateries have come to be the Jacks and Jills of the contemporary business world.

Few places play to empty houses for long. The more visionary create a second chance for themselves by changing their ways. The others close.

Vic’s, the handsome, upscale steak house that opened last autumn in La Jolla’s new Merrill Lynch building, is one restaurant that saw the error of its ways and wised up before it was too late. The clue that things were not going well came when the beautifully set tables and deep, deep banquettes by and large sat empty night after night.

A la carte menu

The problem was that in its effort to be grand, glamorous and impressive, Vic’s management wrote a menu that depended upon a free-spending clientele. This menu was strictly a la carte (even the parsley sprig that garnishes most American restaurant plates rarely appeared), and it took little effort to spend more on dinner here than at any other restaurant in the county.

The cooking, almost without exception, was excellent, but the high cost of dining kept the public away in droves.

Rather than take the route chosen by many of his fellows (that is, refusing to change his ways while moaning about the lack of sophistication in the restaurant-going public), Vic’s general manager, Jack Monaco, decided to rethink his restaurant’s philosophy.

The result is a new menu that is much more in line with what generally is expected of San Diego restaurants. Plates now include variegated and nicely done vegetable garnishes, prices have been lowered (the cost of a meal for two is down considerably) and the menu has been broadened to include dishes outside the steak-and-chop category.

The cooking, which never was a problem, continues to be first-rate (as does the service), and standards also have been maintained--the raw materials all seem to be of the best quality. The steaks and rib roast, for example, still are cut from prime Angus beef, and the veal is the costly, milk-fed variety.

Complimentary Snack

In a deft sleight-of-hand, Monaco removed the sweet, delicious yam chips from the former menu’s a la carte vegetable list and made them a complimentary snack served the moment diners take their chairs. This is a tasty but non-filling snack to nibble while reading the menu.

Although prices are down, it still is possible to be extravagant, and the nicest way to spend money on an appetizer is to order the shrimp with jalapeno-flavored bearnaise sauce. Two extra-large beauties, stuffed with crab mousse and wrapped in bacon, are broiled until the bacon crisps and then covered with a mantle of smooth, extremely rich and somewhat spicy sauce. Other possibilities are a smoked fish plate, a fancy preparation of sauced snails in puff pastry (this sounds somewhat outside Vic’s metier ), Caesar salad, and a salad of greens topped with a roasted quail and a Sherry vinegar sauce. (The quail, in double portion and minus the greens, reappears later on the menu as an entree.)

Smoky Sweet Potato Soup

The soups make excellent alternatives in the starter category. The fine sweet potato soup, smoky with country-style ham and bacon, and textured like double-thick velvet, continues from the old menu. The other soup changes with the day and was recently an imaginative, highly pleasing Thai clam chowder that had nothing to do with the New England dish, but everything to do with taste. Tiny Thai steamer clams reposed with shreds of leek and carrot in a broth made pungent by lime juice, sweet by mango juice, and spicy by an infusion of chili peppers.

The entree list is perhaps a touch more French than formerly, at least in that sauces appear frequently. Loin of New Zealand venison arrives in a pungent red wine sauce; a veal chop is garnished with caramelized shallots, and veal medallions with Roquefort cheese and a Port wine sauce; sauteed salmon is finished in a sauce of tomatoes, shallots, mushrooms and white wine, and sauteed calves liver is doused with its own pan juices elaborated with butter and raspberry vinegar.

Beef Still Dominates

Beef still dominates the menu, notably in a selection of generously carved steaks. The most interesting, if not the most extravagant, probably would be the top sirloin cut in the Japanese “baseball” fashion, which means that it is basically a cube of meat. And tender meat at that, first marinated in soy sauce, dark molasses and rice vinegar; when the steak is pierced by knife and fork, a bit of these mingled liquids seeps onto the plate to make an excellent sauce. The steak was garnished in high style with asparagus spears; a bit of loosely interpreted eggplant Parmigiana; a gratin of potatoes dauphinoise; broiled mushroom caps and leaves of Belgian endive topped with a tomato rose.

A good seafood section finishes the menu. For the extravagant, there is Maine lobster, plucked from a tank in the kitchen and priced at $15.95 a pound. Other choices include San Diego’s favorite shrimp “scampi,” garnished with fettuccine Alfredo, a catch of the day and a fine swordfish steak topped with a clever, Chinese-style sauce. This last incorporates black beans with a mince of mixed red and green peppers, a dressing that manages to be savory, spicy and sweet all at once, and one that mates comfortably with the firm-fleshed fish.

The noted Gustaf Anders restaurant recently opened a bakery in the Merrill Lynch building, and Vic’s has turned this to good advantage. Baskets of Gustaf Anders’ excellent dinner rolls appear throughout the meal and the pastry tray is now laden with the sweets that helped make the La Jolla Shores establishment famous. Good choices, when available, are the berry and pastry cream tarts and the flourless chocolate ganache cake.

VIC’S

7825 Fay Ave., La Jolla

456-3789

Lunch and dinner served Monday through Saturday; brunch on Sunday.

Credit cards accepted.

Dinner for two, including an average bottle of wine, tax and tip, $65 to $95.