Mon Jardin’s True Mission Seems to Be Lost in Fancy Razzle-Dazzle

A mother can look at her ugly duckling and see a swan. This is understandable, forgivable and perhaps even best for the juvenile bundle of joy.

Unfortunately, this blind-eyed credulity extends to some practitioners of the fine arts (including cooking), who seem incapable of regarding their most misbegotten efforts as being misbegotten.

Such, at least at the moment, seems to be the situation at La Jolla’s new Mon Jardin (although time perhaps will be the great healer here). From all indications, this restaurant’s management almost certainly believed itself to be creating the county’s grandest eatery when it designed the place. But Mon Jardin (“My Garden”) seems more a caricature of a fine, formal dinner house than the real thing.

One has a definite sense of having passed through a time warp. This is a traditional French-American restaurant cast in the 1950-60s mold. The very large staff wears evening clothes (even at lunch); the decor is of the plush, dark velvet school, extending right to the upholstered walls, and the menu would be familiar to an aged bon vivant who had his last restaurant meal during the Kennedy Administration.

All this is fine, except that it seems designed to impress guests with hollow razzle-dazzle, as well as to distract patrons from the fairly run-of-the-mill cuisine. Affectation often gets in the way of what should be the restaurant’s true mission; for example, women are offered pillows for their feet. That may be a thoughtful gesture, but in practice it seems silly.

Old-Fashioned Luxury

The menu runs to several pages, but one only has to glance at the first to know what sort of offerings will follow. The appetizer list sticks to old-fashioned luxury of the type respected two centuries ago, and centers on such costly treasures as Beluga caviar, truffled pate de foie gras, smoked salmon and prosciutto with melon. All that these ready-prepared items require of the kitchen is to be plated and served, but the plating should be stylish, after all, and not worthy of the “this is a Denny’s presentation” comment grumbled by a guest who ordered the smoked salmon. (The fish itself was nice but neither the portion nor the garnish justified the $8.50 price tag.)

The other appetizers require some work of the kitchen but didn’t necessarily receive much, as in the case of a shrimp-avocado combination that was merely adequate. The hot choices of shrimp and scallops in lemon and capers, and creamed scallops (both dishes are baked under lids of commercial puff pastry) also are offered in larger portions as entrees. The scallops were sampled and were unremarkable.

A dome of puff pastry also encloses the cream of vegetable soup called “roi soleil” (“Sun King,” in honor of Louis XIV), an inoffensive but unexciting blend of cream, broth and veggies.

Mon Jardin is very much a Caesar salad sort of restaurant but try the spinach salad instead, which includes a nice accent of slivered red peppers in the customary, and in this case quite good, warm bacon dressing. The Caesar seems inspired by some Caesar (perhaps Nero, who fiddled when he should have been grating fresh Parmesan into his salad bowl) other than the Caesar Cardini who introduced this popular dish in the 1920s.

Nothing Original, Just ‘Safe’

Apart from the seafood offerings, the entree list begins with duck in orange sauce and ends with roast rack of lamb (for two), a fact that speaks volumes about Mon Jardin’s culinary orientation. Nothing between these dishes seems at all original or inventive--indeed, the menu seems a compendium of “safe” preparations that once enjoyed immense popularity.

Again, there is nothing wrong with this, provided the dishes are well-prepared. But the preparation is only adequate at best.

A scallop of veal finished with Madeira sauce had a pasty, rather than crisp, exterior, perhaps from being moistened with wine before the flour coating had had a chance to brown. The sauce in any case lacked distinction. Roast lamb loin, offered as a special one night, featured a nice coating of mixed herbs, but was cooked medium-well when it had been ordered very rare. Had the restaurant been busy this might have been forgivable, but there were only three parties in the main dining room.

The restaurant reached the height of affectation with its steak Diane. Much of the point of steak Diane is the tableside preparation, which allows the guests to follow the simple work and ooh! and ah! at all the appropriate places, such as when the meat undergoes its obligatory flaming in unpedigreed brandy.

Mon Jardin’s method is to cook the steak and sauce in the kitchen, then send them out for a last-minute flambe that is meant to dazzle rather than to achieve any culinary purpose. The cart is wheeled over, the brandy poured and ignited--but by this point, the flaming has become an empty ritual, and all it accomplished on the visit in question was the overcooking of the steak.

Imaginative Fish List

The fish list is the most (or only) imaginative segment of the menu, and includes sturgeon in basil butter, sole garnished with crab and a vegetable julienne, salmon in dill sauce and swordfish forestiere. This last sounded clever, adding as it did sliced artichoke bottoms to the usual mushroom garnish (a requirement of forestiere ). The swordfish steak tasted a day or two removed from freshness, however, a fact that the forestiere treatment was unable to disguise.

Affectation returns with the dessert course. A vast trolley laden with pastries is wheeled to the table with some fanfare, but the pastries are from a baker whose shop is down the street, where the same creations may be purchased at retail. As an alternative, one may have such flamed creations as cherries parisienne, a variation on the basic cherries jubilee theme and one that will please those who enjoy hot fruit and syrup atop vanilla ice cream.

Between the undemanding appetizers and the catered pastries, it seems that the kitchen has taken on less of a workload than it might. Yet signs of talent and interest in food occasionally do flash out of the kitchen. The luncheon menu, which includes many of the dishes served at night, also lists something called eggs Benedictine, which at first sounds like a misspelled listing for eggs Benedict, but is not. This dish includes the usual English muffin, Canadian bacon and poached eggs, but eschews the expected hollandaise sauce in favor of a truffled brown sauce of impressive depth and suavity. The sauce makes something special out of what would otherwise be a very commonplace dish.

MON JARDIN

6737 La Jolla Blvd., La Jolla

454-4555

Lunch and dinner served daily

Credit cards accepted

Dinner for two, including a moderate bottle of wine, tax and tip, about $80 to $100.