RESTAURANT REVIEW : Music to Your Taste Buds at Symphonie

On Hawthorne, the Boulevard of Big Signs, it’s easy to miss Symphonie. You practically have to be in the parking lot before you know you’ve made the right turn.

It shouldn’t be missed, though. It may be off the beaten track in Torrance, but Symphonie is one of the most aesthetically pleasing restaurants anywhere, an exquisite little jewel box with wonderful Franco-Japanese food.

There’s something of Paris in the ‘20s, and not just the original Miro sketches on the walls. It has a clean look of straight lines and compass curves, especially the ceiling moldings, and even the bar stools look like something from a Cubist sculpture exhibit. At the same time it’s a relaxing place, bathed in soothing pale blue indirect light, and the proportions of the room are oddly cozy.

The chef/owner is Susumu Fukui of Chaya Brasserie, that epitome of playful-but-serious Franco-Japanese cuisine, and his food is often as pretty as the room itself. Two glossy scoops of sweet pepper mousse resting on fresh tomato puree, one red and the other bright yellow, are artfully garlanded with green onion strings. A puff pastry apple tart is served with a scoop of Grand Marnier ice cream made into a face by a couple of tiny lemon pastilles, a candied violet leaf and fresh mint.

The style is basically French, but interpreted from an odd, personal angle. An appetizer “tart” is essentially pommes Anna (call it a mass of potato chips baked solid in butter) with some foie gras buried in it. Particularly good saddle of venison, with a stronger game flavor than we expect from New Zealand, comes with meat glaze and black currants. Excellent lamb filet with truffles and Madeira sauce is liberally sprinkled with black pepper. There is a faint hint of jalapeno in the pan-fried lobster, but surprisingly the flavor is dominated by the pea-sized balls of carrot and zucchini that alternate with translucent tapioca pearls.

Chef Fukui has brought his habit of offering a nightly changing six-course prix-fixe dinner ($39). I’ve had this once. First came a baby eggplant, cut in a fan pattern on what looked like whipped cream but turned out to be some kind of mousse of peanut oil and chives. Then two little pieces of squid filled with cheese and jalapenos, one served in a sweet tomato sauce and the other in richly funky, indescribably squid-flavored squid ink.

Then a salad of exotic greens and two exquisite lamb chops in a soy dressing, and then what the waiter described as a “flounder sandwich”: an Oriental eggplant split open to receive a thick slice of fried fish, all resting on a totally different tomato sauce, sweet and spiked with whole coriander seed. Then came the leg of duck in meat sauce with black currants, and finally raspberries with a sort of creme brulee topping. It was like eating about two meals and only having to be full enough for one.

At lunch you can order a la carte or choose one of four fixed meals ($10- $12) consisting of three items that fit on one large plate with room to spare. It might be raw beef chunks mixed with julienne carrot in mild mustard sauce, and a tiny beefsteak, and a mild veal curry with lots of coconut in it.

If you look hard, you can find an incongruous electric plug in the ceiling, and it’s also possible to argue with a dish or two--the entree of salmon sitting on a bed of sliced potato and covered with diced vegetables is pretty but it could use salt, or lemon juice or something.

But on the whole Symphonie is breathtakingly good, very close to a faultless restaurant. Torrance just got very lucky.

Symphonie, 23863 Hawthorne Blvd., Torrance. (213) 373-8187. Open for lunch Tuesday through Friday and Sunday; for dinner Tuesday through Sunday. Full bar. Valet parking. All major credit cards accepted. Dinner for two, $50 to $68.