California Cafe Specializes in Taking Banality to New Heights

To be average in this country has been to achieve a golden mean, and the new California Cafe Bar & Grill at Horton Plaza can be credited with taking average cuisine to its zenith, if such a feat is not contradictory.

The newest offspring of a Northern California chain, California Cafe seems very much a “concept” restaurant, and, correspondingly, it serves concept food, which, in the absence of really good food, is relatively acceptable.

A total of six diners sampled California Cafe’s lengthy and complicated menu over the course of two recent visits, and five of them, when asked how their food tasted, politely answered, “It’s all right.” The sixth guest, perhaps intent upon demonstrating an independent turn of mind, said his meal was “OK.”

California Cafe Restaurant Corp., based in Corte Madera, operates restaurants there and in such places as San Ramon, Yountville, Los Gatos and Walnut Creek. Its local public relations representative said the chain plans on “expanding significantly” in San Diego County within the next few years.

Top Deck at Horton Plaza

California Cafe has taken one of the few remaining restaurant locations in Horton Plaza--on the top deck next door to the artful Panda Inn--and built a place geared to the high volume that this center generates. At the dinner hour, a constant stream of guests pours through the door, and the restaurant accommodates the crowd at tables in the spacious indoor dining rooms and on the terrace, which is blessed with some of the better views in the city.

The interior is neither handsome nor distasteful, but really rather average, with a piano thrown in as a gracious gesture and a contrasting small economy taken in the form of the paper place mats placed on top of the tablecloths. (The mats are hard to appreciate, especially at these prices.) The open kitchen seems fairly standard for the age. Perhaps because the restaurant is new, the service runs in fits and starts, and, on occasion, guests will find themselves waiting a good bit longer than they might like.

The menu fairly shouts its concept, which seems based on the general principles of California cuisine tempered by the “something for everyone” approach. In a shopping center location, this sort of menu does not seem entirely unreasonable.

The prices, however, on the whole are high. This criticism extends to the wine list, which is sufficiently extensive but seems overly expensive.

One side of the menu is printed daily, the other lists a standing selection of starters, salads, sandwiches and grilled meats, and the two pages of entries make for a challenging and somewhat exhausting read. The general tone is set by the very first appetizer: chicken and basil pot stickers with pesto vinaigrette. This is simultaneously Chinese, Italian and French, and also simultaneously none of them because it is an artificial creation.

That probably makes the dish an example of California cuisine, a term that applies equally well to the smoked duck quesadilla; the charred, rare, peppered tuna with radish and sweet onion salad; the New Mexico-style red chili onion rings; the clam and corn chowder and the tostada salad with papaya seed dressing. A more traditional opener, a pair of crisp crab cakes with a caper mayonnaise, was excellent, and was one of the kitchen’s best offerings in any category.

Variety of Salads

The many salads range from a perfunctory mixed green, moistened with a toneless vinaigrette, to a rather nice Caesar, which can be extended, if desired, with morsels of highly seasoned grilled chicken. This last will serve as a meal, as will the Asian salad sampler, a plate that offers mounds of Chinese chicken salad, Thai shrimp salad on soba noodles (which are Japanese, not Thai) and cold beef in oyster sauce. The guest who ordered this plate perhaps offered the most sincere “It’s all right” when asked to comment on the quality of Cafe California’s cuisine.

The menu seems behind the times when it offers such ersatz Cajun dishes as blackened prime rib and blackened catfish, although it takes a moderate approach to the seasoning--the prime rib had a decent flavor and survived the high-heat cooking with its juices pretty much intact. Both of these have been offered on the daily entree list, which also has featured a second-rate grilled veal chop in what purported to be sauce choron (when made correctly, this is a tomatoed bearnaise) but was more a pinkish beurre blanc ; grilled mahi mahi with roasted pineapple and amaretto almond butter sauce, a menu description that needs no further comment, and talapia steamed in a bamboo basket with soba noodles and vegetables. This last is one of Cafe California’s big production numbers, since the fancy basket makes a big impression at the table; the restaurant refers to this as a “theater of dining experience.”

The “rockjitas” is in the same theatrical mood, and hinges for its effect upon the slab of granite, heated to 500 degrees, which is brought to the table as the diner’s personal grill. After sprinkling seasoned white and/or red wine on the hot rock, the diner adds sliced steak and slivered chicken breast and cooks it to taste before rolling the meat in cold, tough corn tortillas along with mild salsa, guacamole and raw vegetables. This version of fajitas is all right, but not great, and the plate seems incomplete without a portion of beans or rice to fill it out. (Both this and the steamed fish, by the way, are among many dishes noted by the menu as including minimum amounts of added fats, sodium and cholesterol.)

The menu also devotes much space to pasta, sandwiches and smoked and grilled meats. An angel hair pasta with tomatoes, basil, garlic and Parmesan was oddly sweet; the hamburger was fat, but was served on an even fatter bun that would have been much happier had it been toasted, and an order of smoked baby back ribs (the barbecue sauce naturally included Chinese hoisin sauce for that extra Cafe California touch) was all right.

The kitchen does shine when it comes to desserts, which are priced right up there with the best of them. One house special is cream puffs stuffed with a choice of ice creams; the French call these profiteroles , and there is nothing unusual about them, but the kitchen makes a good pastry and douses it with an even better chocolate sauce. The bread pudding souffle, which frankly looked like neither bread pudding nor a souffle, also was deliciously chocolaty and very, very rich.

CAFE CALIFORNIA BAR & GRILL

Top level of Horton Plaza

238-5440

Lunch and dinner daily.

Credit cards accepted.

Dinner for two, including a glass of wine each, tax and tip, $30 to $70.