RESTAURANT REVIEW : Nothing <i> Nouvelle</i> About French Fare at Le Chene

The Southern California landscape was very different eight years ago when Le Chene started serving old-fashioned French cooking in a picturesque building out beyond Canyon Country.

There was much less development and much more open space. But even then, it must have been strange to leave a genteel dining room after a French meal and find yourself in a moonlit landscape of chaparral-covered hills.

No development has altered the surrounding high-desert terrain--a two-lane road still vanishes into the blackness around the next bend--and I still expect Mel Brooks and the entire crew of “Blazing Saddles” to ride up after wrapping the day’s shooting.

Out in Canyon Country, the rambling, fanciful Le Chene looks so strange you may think that it is a mirage. But there’s nothing strange inside. The interior is pleasantly unpretentious, and the menu is sheer nostalgia. For those who have become accustomed to California-French cooking, most of the listings are as time-delayed as the restaurant’s setting: Virtually all the entrees are identified by a cream or butter sauce. One even has a cherry sauce. It makes for a fascinating trip of culinary rediscovery.

Le Chene’s appetizers are, on the whole, more successful than the substantial dishes that follow. The duck pate, a Gargantuan portion, returns honor to this much-abused dish. Most pate seems like homogenized anonymous meat, but Le Chene’s duck pate actually tasted like duck. Moreover, its coarse and unctuous quality gave it a real country character too rarely achieved.

Another welcome starter, also available as a main dish, is tongue vinaigrette with capers. The tongue was tender, the vinaigrette well-balanced, and the capers added contrasting texture and bite. Stuffed mushrooms, a dish I generally find banal, is well-handled here. The mushroom caps are served very much like snails Provencal: Each cap is filled with half an herbed cocktail tomato and doused with garlic butter. They are grilled and set in the indents of a snail tray.

My experience of the shrimp Monagasque was less favorable: The large butterflied shrimp had lost their appealing texture through overcooking; a pool of drawn butter didn’t help.

The most impressive thing about the entrees at Le Chene is their number: How can a kitchen turn out so many different dishes? One way, alas, is through the use of shortcuts. Those dishes made with fruit, for example, are made with canned fruit. Even so, chicken Montmorency, with a big cherry sauce, was not unpleasantly sweet. Still, the chicken Provencal with tomatoes and herbs was far more successful. Sweetbreads with morels was another agreeable combination.

Judging by a filet of beef Roquefort and a veal chop forestiere (with a dark mushroom sauce), the quality of meat used at Le Chene is admirably high. Vegetables, on the other hand, have been limited to textureless cauliflower in an overly rich white cream sauce. Scalloped potatoes provided an ideal contrast between oven-crisped crust and full-bodied slices of potato in an appropriately rich cream, butter and cheese sauce.

Desserts are elaborate and good-looking but not outstanding. There’s a bavorois that looked like a white flan and was too subtle for my taste. A white chocolate Charlotte wasn’t much more interesting. The desserts could have been improved by a cup of robust coffee, but the coffee was even thinner than American coffee generally is.

The wine list contains a smattering of bottles in most price categories.

Le Chene is a conscientious purveyor of its kind of French cooking. If this style appeals to you, you are not likely to be disappointed by your meal. In any event, you will have discovered a delightful bit of old-time Southern California--both in the terrain and on the table.

Recommended dishes: duck pate, $5.75; stuffed mushrooms, $5.75; chicken Provencal, $12.50; beef tongue with capers, $11.50.

Le Chene, 12625 Sierra Highway (11 miles northeast of the Sierra Highway exit of the Antelope Valley Freeway), Saugus. (805) 251-4315. Open 4 to 9:30 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays, 5:30 to 10:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. Sundays. Liquor, wine and beer. American Express, Visa and Diners Club accepted. Parking. Dinner for two, food only, $40 to $60.