RESTAURANTS / Max Jacobson : Country French Food Is Sometimes Uptown : Max Jacobson

Though country French cuisine is relatively simple to reproduce, surprisingly few restaurants do it justice. Overblown dishes suited to fancier dining rooms often crop up where a simple salad of white beans or a crusty tartine would do very nicely. And many of these restaurants feature menus that are so impressed with themselves that they forget to serve plain good food.

The Pleasant Peasant lives up to its name, at least partly. It is a pleasant place, if self-consciously so, with the type of decor you might be tempted to call Frilly Cottage--e.g., knickknack wall mounts, flowery wallpaper, elegant table settings. The dining room reminds you of a gift store specializing in fancy imported soaps. As for the Peasant part of its name, it isn’t.

Like many restaurants that are supposedly country French, The Pleasant Peasant’s menu gets bogged down in dishes you wish it wouldn’t bother with, such as le canard a l’orange , or supreme de volaille a la creme . And when the waitress asked me how crispy I liked my duck, I didn’t realize that she was really asking me how long I wanted the thing frazzled in a deep fryer. The dish arrived sodden with grease, though the duck skin was crisp. And that orange sauce wouldn’t have been out of place over shaved ice.

As for the volaille , why take a perfectly good breast of chicken and smother it in a cream sauce thick enough to eat with chicken-fried steak? That may be country American, but it sure isn’t country French.

Look past these kinds of excesses, however, and the Pleasant Peasant may win you over. Prices are very reasonable, especially considering that all dinners are served with both soup and salad. (The salad is a bit perfunctory, but soups are especially fine.)

One night there were three soups: a thick lentil, a smooth gazpacho and a homey corn chowder. Every one was flavorful, simple, and pure. Appetizers like l’assiette du Bistro (an equally simple plate of cold cuts and cheeses) also do a credible job. The tonier aubergine Chamonix (an eggplant gratin with ham and Swiss cheese under a rich, bubbly sauce) is less impressive.

Among main dishes I can recommend are two lamb specialties, le carre d’agneau (a generous piece of lamb rack sprinkled with herbes de Provence ) and le jarret d’agneau (lamb shank in white wine and tomato sauce). The rack I tasted was tender and full of flavor. The shank was fragrant with natural juices.

I can’t recommend the pot roast with shallots, however. The meat was soft but tasteless. And the sauce, sort of a thick brown glaze, was so sweet that I couldn’t taste the meat. Don’t fool with pastas here, either. Fusilli with vegetables was downright soggy, smothered in a thick creamy sauce that rendered it nearly inedible.

La Brasserie in Orange has fewer problems than the Pleasant Peasant in the kitchen, but its advertised country French style rarely materializes. When it does, the result is good eating.

It’s a dark, elegant sort of place with copper pots hanging from the ceiling and a clubby, candlelit ambiance. It’s also quite a bit pricier than most. The only informality is provided by some 19th-Century French poster art that wouldn’t be out of place in a brightly lit cafe on the Boulevard St. Germain. But the menu is considerably more uptown.

You’re apt to notice a spate of veal dishes--10 to be exact. Marsala, Cordon Bleu and saltimbocca , for example, and also Continental staples such as lobster Newburg and caviar. You’ll have a better, and certainly less expensive evening, if you avoid the luxuries here.

I noticed that there were two foie gras appetizers, one advertised as a chicken liver mousse at $7.95, the other a goose liver terrine for $19.95. So I asked the cheerful French waiter if the more expensive one was really that much better. “ Mais non ,” he replied under his breath, “the terrine is from a jar, and the mousse is made here.” Naturally, the chicken liver mousse turned out to be great--smoothly rich in a wonderful, homemade aspic.

Similarly, you can have onion soup from the menu at extra charge, or you can have the soup of the day with your dinner. Mine was a farmhouse vegetable soup served in a crock that was as country French as anything I had all week. It beat the onion soup to pieces. Should you prefer a salad (you don’t get both here), it’s made of bibb lettuce with a creamy tarragon vinaigrette.

I had to search a bit for what I thought might be real country dishes, but the effort proved worthwhile. Coq au vin rouge is great here, a half-chicken that had been gently braised in a burgundy-colored sauce until it fell from the bone with smoky flavors. Calf’s liver is wonderful, too--pan fried crisp, luxuriously browned, and buried in butter and shallot. Both dishes are accompanied by garlicky diced potatoes and broccoli Hollandaise . They are, as the French say, worth a detour.

The Pleasant Peasant is moderately priced. Appetizers are $3.25 to $10.50. Main courses begin at $8.50, and go up to $20. La Brasserie is moderate to expensive. Appetizers are $6.50 to $27.50. Main dishes are $13.95 to $23.95. Both restaurants have the predictable creme caramel , chocolate mousse, French pastry dessert menus. Desserts at the Pleasant Peasant run about 50 cents less than at La Brasserie, averaging about $3.50 apiece, and are not nearly as well-crafted.

THE PLEASANT PEASANT

4251 Martingale Way, Newport Beach

(714) 955-2755

Open for lunch Monday through Friday 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m.; for dinner, Monday through Thursday 5:30 p.m. to 9 p.m., Friday and Saturday 5:30 p.m. to 10 p.m. Closed Sunday.

All major credit cards accepted.

LA BRASSERIE

202 S. Main St., Orange. (714) 978-6161

Open for lunch, Monday through Friday 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m.; for dinner, Monday through Saturday 5 p.m. to 10 p.m.

All major credit cards accepted.