Seventh Street Bistro Caters to the Space-Age Gourmet

The Seventh Street Bistro, located in the old Fine Arts Building downtown, is one lovely restaurant. Tranquil in atmosphere, courtly in manner, Seventh Street serves refined nouvelle French food. Now that homemade pate of fresh foie gras with its just-baked brioche, that veal roulade with wild rice and those vast platters of squiggly hors d’oeuvres can appear before your very eyes--on your desk, in your boardroom, in the back of your Bentley en route to your Lear.

Seventh Street Bistro’s wedding-white boxes and embossed hard clear plastic platters could be a Barbie starter-set and its hermetically sealed hot food packs merge Matisse-like colors with NASA efficiency. In short, before you even plunge into your meal, this place communicates exquisite care.

When you do work your way into the edible portion of the display you’ll find delicate, soothing cuisine. In the mood for a three-course meal to go? There are 11 complete dinners ranging in extravagance from vegetable salad and chicken breast to lobster salad and tournedos of venison, from $22.50 to $47.50 per person.

I tried a mid-priced $37.50 dinner beginning with four large delicious flying saucer-shaped chicken ravioli immersed in a ladylike garlic-thyme sauce and ending with a pretty platter of raspberries, nicely cut strawberries and plenty of pastry cream. In between there were fresh rolls and a delicate striped bass in a blazingly colored tender-hearted yellow saffron cream. The sauces sometimes veer past the well-bred into the just-too-polite, but the brilliance of the side dishes often rev up the meal. In this case, braised tomatoes with fresh basil moved dinner into high gear.

Many of the dishes are meant to be served hot so you need a microwave oven (or a pot of boiling water) at your command. The flying-saucer ravioli arrived in a pouch geared for an astronaut’s meal. The sea bass came in a second packet, its saffron sauce in a third. All of them are meant to be plunged into heat for a couple of minutes, then cut open and, voila , rushed onto a plate. The chef gave me directions over the phone. “Call again if there’s a problem,” he advised. “You can keep the food fresh in those packets, refrigerated for two weeks.”

I didn’t wait. Into the boiling vat went several a la carte entrees: a packet of duck breast and carrots with an accompanying pouch of ginger/orange sauce ($18), and another packet containing a rare beef filet in port wine sauce with its sidekick of braised endive ($20). One egg-timer shake later, dinner was ready to be gorgeously arranged (or poured) onto the plates.

Ranging from $17.95 to $30, there are at least a dozen hot a la carte entrees to choose from. If you’re in the mood for something lighter and less expensive, there are numerous salads and appetizers that could make a swell working lunch. One warning: Though completely compelling, I wouldn’t suggest eating that fresh foie gras pate ($12) at a business meeting--it’s so rich and runny it cries to head a “Tom Jones” after-hours feast. I’d also pass on the pasta salad with roasted bell peppers and shrimps (black olives are listed but none appeared) or the chicken/duck salad with Roquefort, avocado and Xeres vinegar dressing ($10 each). The linguine is greasy and the salad is pallid and oily, though that Roquefort is sublime.

There are more than two dozen different hot and cold hors d’oeuvres to choose from. A friend and I went through the list and had a zany little lunch, a kind of cocktail party for two. (Several selections, like the mini pizzas and the quiche, can only be ordered for ten persons or more. Just ask.) The least expensive way to go in this department is the sweet little plate of puff pastry cheese straws--$1.75 per person. Top of the line are the potato pancakes with Sevruga caviar at $10 a hit.

The scallops wrapped in bacon are fabulous. Smoky and sweet, they cost $5.25 per person for a satisfying portion. Thin bundles of perfectly steamed asparagus encased in excellent smoked salmon wrappers ($3.50 per person) are the other don’t-miss treat.

For dessert, you’ll find a sticky pecan tart with vanilla sauce that tastes like a tony candy bar, a flaky round apple tart with a burst of pureed apricots and a tart, sweet creamy lemon mousse terrine with its astro-pack of intense black currant sauce. Think la vie en rose meets the Jet Propulsion Lab.

Seventh Street Bistro, 815 West 7th St. (213) 627-1242. Take-out orders available for lunch and dinner Monday through Saturday. All major credit cards accepted. Validated parking. Call 24 hours in advance for hors d’oeuvre orders. Delivery (and waiters) available.