Tremors of Change at Bernard’s

Some people suffer earthquake trauma. I get restaurant trauma. The time I expected the Basin to tumble into the sea wasn’t during last fall’s shaker but after the announcement some months before that Bernard Jacoupy was leaving Bernard’s at the Biltmore for the Meridien Hotel in Newport Beach, followed by the departure of his chef, Roland Gibert, to Califia in Manhattan Beach.

For years Bernard’s had been part of the local bedrock, a major standard of skilled and inventive cooking. What would become of us if Bernard’s were really gone? Showing all the symptoms of restaurant bereavement syndrome, I dithered and delayed about finding out.

When first I went back, about three weeks ago, I was relieved. There were no shocking changes, no Art Deco wallpaper, no recorded music. Bernard’s is still a dark, sunken room of cushioned hush punctuated by gentle harp music, where a cart of liqueurs and eaux-de-vie comes by after dinner (and dinner is still the only serious meal; lunch at Bernard’s has always been minor league). The menu, by new chef Roger Pigozzi, was clearly making an attempt to keep up the tradition, even to the point of suggesting the old Bernard’s obsessive habit of latching onto some ingredient--say, truffle oil--and putting it into all sorts of dishes. Here it was nasturtium blossoms, which show up on the salad, the salmon tartare and the sweetbreads and lobster.

Service is still of a mannered and old-fashioned sort, with two black-suited waiters bringing the food out on a cart and fussing over it beside your table, warming the entrees over a little burner and arranging them on the plate before your wondering eyes, making little piles of broccoli flowerets like a Boy Scout building a fire, placing peeled baby beets or tartlets filled with mushroom puree just so on your plate.

My meal was practically faultless. There was a rich black fettuccine made with olives, served in a light cream and ground sweet pepper sauce with pleasingly plush scallops. Maybe the vinegar of the pickled cucumber and pink ginger that surrounded the duck foie gras on walnut bread toast was a little harsh, but the appetizer was a pleasure anyway. The game of the evening was elk, tasting like a cross between beefsteak and liver, served with a simple and sensible garlic sauce. But the high point was a truly memorable beefsteak in whole-seed mustard sauce, a good two inches thick and as tender as hamburger with a sweet, rare beef flavor.

“Great,” I thought. “I’ll go back, I’ll bring some friends.” But the second time there were disturbing signs. The first came in a cream of asparagus soup with a tiny bit of mussel in it: the faint, custardy aroma of scorched milk. This soup had to come from a pot with a delicate tan lacework of scorching on the bottom. Then there was a decidedly tough duck breast, and an ill-advised dish of baby salmon wrapped in Napa cabbage topped with a violent sour plum sauce. The best entree was the simplest, a wonderful grilled veal chop sprinkled with rosemary (and a few flakes of expensive but nearly flavorless canned truffle).

The best appetizer this time around was like something from the old Bernard’s: a pig’s foot stuffed with escargots. That’s the kind of daring Bernard’s was known for, serving a declasse meat like pig’s foot (to be sure, serving it deboned) in a restaurant where black-suited waiters glide by with entree-heating carts and a harpist is playing Eric Satie. It was a little heavy on the thyme, but there was something of the excitement of the old days in the contrast between its crunchy, gelatinous texture and the chewiness of the escargots.

But this was the disturbing note. I ordered the seafood ravioli colored with red bell pepper served with Pernod cream sauce, even though it seemed a somewhat conventional choice for Bernard’s--lots of places are making Pernod sauce these days, usually drowning everything in anise flavor. At least that wouldn’t happen at Bernard’s! Uh-oh. Enough Pernod in the sauce to perfume the whole table.

The horrible truth was that Bernard’s, which used to start fashions, was following them, and not the best ones at that.

Sweetbreads, in a fussy timbale covered with paper-thin slices of carrot and parsnip looking like an old-fashioned circus tent, were surrounded by pieces of lobster swimming in a pool of pureed peas. Of all the silly restaurant fashions--how could anybody ever suggest with a straight face that peas, starchy, grainy peas, make a good basis for a sauce?

At any rate, the desserts still seem good. There was a wonderful chocolate pave in apricot puree with little star-crossed clown’s eyes of raspberry puree; a good raspberry frozen souffle on a base of thin layers of sponge cake separated by jam; a pretty good chocolate mousse cake and a luscious fruit sabayon. And thank God for the after-dinner drink cart. I was feeling unsteady, as after an earthquake.

Bernard’s, Biltmore Hotel, 515 S. Olive St., Los Angeles; (213) 612-1580. Open for dinner Monday through Saturday, for lunch Monday through Friday. Wine and after-dinner drinks. Valet parking. All major credit cards. Dinner for two, food only, $70-$110.