California Cuisine’s Cooking Combines Creative, Contemporary

One rarely hears California cuisine discussed these days, even though the style thrives under the nurturing care of some of the state’s better chefs.

The term may have died at the hands of chain-feedery executives and their public relations minions, who bullied it savagely. (One publicity release mailed by a leading San Diego firm touted a client’s menu of “California cuisine dishes like prime rib and New York sirloin”). Thus, the term was frequently invoked to describe the suburban can-of-soup school of cooking, which jumbles ill-matched ingredients at will while praying for the best.

One also rarely hears mention of the Hillcrest restaurant named California Cuisine, even though it continues to turn out thoughtful, imaginative, contemporary-style fare for what seems a fairly steady clientele. The intelligence behind the cooking reveals itself when one glances down the list of menu entries, which features dishes that sometimes sound fantastic but never implausible.

Menu Printed Daily

Chef Chris Walsh prints the menu daily, and it recently commenced with chilled watermelon and lime soup and concluded with steamed halibut with tropical fruit and mint vinaigrette. These two dishes made intriguing brackets to a list that also mentioned such teasers as a shrimp tamale sauced with margarita beurre blanc (a creamy butter sauce flavored with lime and tequila) and charbroiled duck, glazed with dark rum and garnished with papaya.

Each of these dishes was undoubtedly novel, but none seemed like the modern equivalent of a drugstore lunch-counter special. Real knowledge of technique is required by anyone who hopes to puzzle together unlikely combinations of ingredients into workable dishes, and such knowledge seems in generous supply here.

Just as some dishes are overlaid with tone upon tone, the dining room’s soft gray color scheme is highlighted with pastel abstract paintings and extravagant protea blossoms in table-top vases. The service proceeds smoothly, and it should be mentioned--only because so few San Diego restaurants trouble themselves with this important detail--that hot preparations arrive on hot plates.

A recent menu offered so many wildly creative appetizers that the temptation arose to order several and call them dinner. A cream soup elaborated from smoked onions and sun-dried tomatoes sounded promising and proved the smash hit of the evening. Chocolate in color, it approached the taste buds gradually and tasted smoky only after the first several sips--a really remarkable soup, it was velvety, sweet, deep-toned and rich, and offered more than might reasonably have been expected of its two main ingredients.

Another starter was a fine example of how California and contemporary cuisine updates and transforms traditional dishes. The menu described the finished product as a “crayfish chili relleno with black bean sauce and cilantro creme fraiche .” It was an altogether elegant and novel presentation of a time-honored Mexican specialty.

Subtle Bean Sauce

Because crayfish tails are now fashionable, it seemed natural enough for them to be included along with the traditional cheese in the filling. The pepper itself was battered and fried in the normal method, but, instead of the typical red sauce and (sometimes) sour cream garnish, the kitchen used the subtle black bean sauce as a reminder of the beans often used in Mexican cooking. The cilantro-flavored creme fraiche (a thick, cultured cream) stood in nicely for the sour cream.

The menu devotes a good bit of space to elaborate salads (none of which were sampled, although the “Thai mosaic” with grilled scallops sounded like it had great potential) and to pastas, which, like so many restaurants now, California Cuisine treats as only incidentally Italian. The “California carbonara “ proved one of the least interesting of the kitchen’s offerings. Traditionally, this dish calls for spaghetti or fettuccine to be tossed with crisp bacon, beaten eggs and Parmesan cheese. California cuisine changed the formula only slightly by slipping in a bit of white sauce and some sauteed mushrooms. Other, perhaps better, choices were fettuccine with chicken, asparagus and cashews in brown butter, and linguine with shrimp, shiitake mushrooms and roasted garlic butter.

This sense of exploration continues under the entree list, which offers such things as chicken breast dressed with a spicy walnut, sesame and tomato butter; veal chop with gingered brandy and chestnut cream, and lamb loin in a highly seasoned, Chinese-style plum sauce.

Real Star of Show

The real star of the show here, however, was an outrageously beautiful grilled filet of Norwegian salmon, cooked somewhat on the rare side and lightly charred so that the moist flesh took on an intense flavor. The fish rested in a puddle of banana-ginger chutney, a smooth, exotic sauce that offered pleasingly complementary sweet and sharp accents.

A dish of pork medallions, garnished with plump figs and doused with a mild Zinfandel sauce, showed how ingredients sometimes work together to make a dish special. A bite of pork taken with the sauce alone actually was rather bland, but with a bit of fig added to the mix the sauce seemed intense and the meat much more savory.

When the waiter recited the list of desserts, replete with the usual chocolate and fruit fantasies, he also mentioned something that sounded so modest that it seemed out of place at California Cuisine. That fact alone meant there must be something interesting about the lime/poppy-seed cake in pear sauce. A rather dry yet tender cake, it took flavors somewhat foreign to American dessert-making and used them quite cleverly. The flavors were, in fact, muted but companionable, the pear sauce adding the necessary note of sweetness and the poppy seeds an elegant and very old-fashioned presence.

CALIFORNIA CUISINE

1027 University Ave.

543-0790

Dinner served Tuesday through Sunday; closed Monday.

Credit cards accepted.

Dinner for two, including a glass of wine each, tax and tip, $35 to $75.