Restaurant Stages Festive Rendez-Vous With 101 Lobsters

American food historians have written that early Massachusetts colonists found lobster so abundant that they apologized when they served it to guests.

Because those colonists were of good English stock, they took the proper English view of food and treated this wealth of lobsters as if variety were an unnecessary spice of life. The French-born Andre Vautrin, chef-proprietor of Le Rendez-Vous in Old Town, fortunately regards lobsters with a Parisian rather than a Puritan eye. On March 17 he inaugurated “One Hundred and One Lobster Tails,” a monthlong lobster festival that continues through April 17 and features--you guessed it--101 lobster preparations.

Vautrin said that he invented about half of the preparations, and many of these indeed are distinctive. Other recipes derive from the classic French kitchen, and a few, such as lobsters armoricaine and bretonne, are ancient.

Set Price for Dinners

The set price of $16.50 includes an exceptional house salad (sliced radishes and celery in a strong mustard vinaigrette over crisp, carefully chosen greens) and the lobster dish of choice, which will be garnished with rice or pasta according to the nature of the preparation. The hot dishes are made with local lobster, which recently went out of season and is therefore frozen; for the lobster salads and cold dishes, Vautrin uses the larger New Zealand specimens, which he said give him more attractive and presentable slices of meat.

The list commences with lobster bisque (which you may prefer not to do because it is salty and rather sharp with the unexpected accent of snipped chives) and works its way through such familiar dishes as thermidore and hollandaise to such exotica as lobster tequila and lobster Arizona, this last sauced with sun-dried tomatoes and what the menu describes as “secret herbs.” The four entrees sampled were, without exception, brilliantly prepared.

Six of the entrees are cold, and the bare truth is that a self-indulgent couple or foursome can easily split one of these as an appetizer. The choice includes the classic a la parisienne, a salad of lobster mixed with vegetables and stiff mayonnaise; lobster in tarragon aspic; lobster in cold pate, and poached lobster paired with foie gras and doused with walnut vinaigrette, which sounds like the most Sybaritic treatment possible.

Lobster, Truffle Salad

The warm lobster and truffle salad strikes almost as luxurious a note. This dish is clever in its simplicity, the lobster chunks and bits of black truffle poured with the oil in which they were heated over a simple arrangement of greens. Bits of savory, sauteed carrot add an anonymous richness to the dish, which is extraordinarily lobstery; truffle always serves as a flavor intensifier, and it certainly does its job well in this situation.

Vautrin plumbed the depths of French culinary tradition with his lobster a l’oseille , or in sorrel sauce, which he presented quite differently from what had been expected. This sauce usually is a rich cream bursting with the tangy, lemony taste peculiar to sorrel, and it is indeed one of the best seafood sauces imaginable. Vautrin went for subtlety instead, preparing a veloute based on lobster stock, lightly thickened rather than creamed, and flavored with whole leaves of sorrel cooked so briefly that they had no chance to melt into the sauce. The result was, again, a dish of superb intensity of flavor.

Imagination, in extravagant supply on this special menu, bursts forth most capriciously with such dishes as the lobster gazpacho and the lobster Ali Baba; the latter dish that looks rather dubious when described in print but absolutely explodes in the mouth. Inspired by the cuisine of North Africa, this dish presents lobster chunks on a bed of couscous (steamed grain) and raisins, the whole dressed with a weird-sounding but delicious honey sauce. The North African motif is capped by the addition of fresh mint leaves, which add a final, agreeable flavor.

French Curry

The “exotic” lobster also came off exceptionally well, thanks to its curry sauce enriched with pineapple bits. The operative point here is that the sauce is a French curry, which is quite different from the Indian product and is actually one of the more austere sauces in the French repertoire. The taste is somehow flat, but not in the pejorative sense, because it presents a pleasing bitterness to the tongue and, once again, serves to deepen, rather than mask, the flavors of the food it moistens.

Vautrin said that his lobster with pesto, a sauce of basil, garlic and olive oil, has thus far proven a hot seller. However, this combination frankly seems less attractive than such other spicy choices as the lobsters in pink peppercorn sauce; in two mustard sauces; with the spicy mayonnaise called rouille ; with the spicy saffron sauce called mediterranee , and a la citronelle , or seasoned with fresh lemon grass.

Some dishes featured related sauces. The hollandaise, for example, becomes bearnaise when prepared with shallots, vinegar and tarragon, and bearnaise becomes choron with the addition of tomato ( choron is in any case a knockout sauce.) The numerous cream sauces change names with their seasonings, although they begin with the same base, so that the cream sauce for the lobster normande is transformed into Dublin with the addition of herb puree, aux concombres when diced cucumbers are stirred into the sauce, and au chardonnay with the addition of the wine of the same name.

The list seems not to end--there is lobster with avocado cream; with fried parsley (very Belgian); on a bed of steamed leeks; with seaweed ( aux algues ); with nettles; in dill, champagne, cilantro, lemon, red wine and banana-rum sauces, and grilled with a variety of garnishes and flavored butters. The list concludes with “lobster Kingdom, with a Peter Pan garnish,” billed as a dish “for the gourmet kids.” This creation of French master chef Paul Bocuse, who invented it for the restaurant he oversees at Walt Disney’s EPCOT Center in Orlando, Fla., seems fairly easygoing and consists of lobster in a cream sauce flavored with tomatoes, onions and parsley. The “Peter Pan garnish” is simply buttered rice mixed with corn kernels.

A rich dessert may seem too much of a good thing after a lobster dinner, but Vautrin offers quite a number of them anyway. The stiff, bitter, dark chocolate mousse and the tart apple crepe in caramel sauce are both excellent choices.

As a final note, should the party include anyone who dislikes seafood, the regular Rendez-Vous menu of French classics and regional specialties will be available throughout the lobster festival.

LE RENDEZ-VOUS

2391 San Diego Ave.

298-3032

Lunch and dinner Tuesday through Sunday; closed Monday.

Credit cards accepted.