RESTAURANT REVIEW : Les Freres Taix: It’s Almost Like Home

How long ago did I last visit Les Freres Taix? I thought it was called “Friar Tex,” after a gun-toting pard of Robin Hood’s, that’s how long ago. I think it was the only French restaurant I ever saw until I was old enough to get into my own trouble.

The family reckoned its expedition into this alien French territory a success, as I recall. My father was relieved that the waiter had not forced him to order in French, and I expect he was glad that the tab was not as high as he might have feared. My mother seemed pleased that French cuisine was not, after all, so different from her own home cooking. Vegetable soup, lettuce salad, meat with gravy, sherbet: voila !

Los Angeles has gotten a lot more sophisticated about French food since then, but Les Freres Taix has scarcely changed a hair. It still has easygoing waiters and low prices, and it still underplays its Frenchness at just about every turn. A wise policy, surely, to judge by the loyalty of its customers. The only way you can tell Taix isn’t officially trendy is that its parking lot is full of Lincolns rather than BMWs.

In one way, it’s way ahead of many a hotter place. The wine list is famous, amazingly broad both in French and California selections and almost impossibly cheap. Not only that, you can buy wine by the case here, cheaper than at a lot of wine stores.

When you sit down, you get decently sour, though not particularly crusty, sourdough bread, and sometimes (not always, for reasons that escape me) a plate of celery, radishes and green onions. There’s a basic menu of a dozen meat, fish and chicken dishes to choose from, plus a few cautiously Frenchified pastas and a regular dish of the day: e.g., on Tuesdays it’s tongue. There are also some blackboard specials where you might see a strange and exotic word like Cajun , but they tend to be gone by 7:30 or 8 p.m. Taix diners are early diners.

Before your entree comes the soup of the day, usually a cabbagey vegetable soup that might be varied with pasta or beans, and then a green salad. Taix is loyal to iceberg lettuce, and you’re not likely to see any radicchio around these parts. You might have preceded soup and salad, though, with some a la carte appetizers, perhaps Taix’s surprisingly tender escargots , or a mild liver pate , or hearts of palm with iceberg lettuce.

The entrees still tend to be meat with gravy, accompanied by scalloped potatoes and some zucchini spears stewed with tomato. And the gravy varies scrupulously with the meat. With the roast chicken, it has mushrooms and a bit of tomato in it; with the attereau of beef (a hamburger steak with an unusual coarse and juicy texture), it’s scented with cinnamon and clove; with porc financier , a Monday-night special, it has onions, mushrooms and a strong dose of red wine, making a dish of pork that resembles coq au vin .

Dinner comes with sherbet, but there are also a la carte desserts to choose from. The choice might be a mainstream cheesecake with a bit of lemon flavor, a puff paste shell filled with canned-type cherry pie filling, a chocolate mousse that’s rather like chocolate pudding, or a chocolate cake that tastes like a cross between Duncan Hines and an Oreo cookie.

Altogether, the effect is a lot like home cooking. The meat, while never actually tough, is no more tender than you’d expect at these amazingly low prices. The rice pilaf speckled with carrot could be Minute Rice. Even the ambitious dishes are the sort of thing we tend to figure we can do at home, like trout almandine.

In short, Taix is the most curious thing in the L.A. food world: a restaurant for the wine lovers who are not foodies. As was Friar Tex and his merry hombres, I believe.

Les Freres Taix, 1911 Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles. (213) 484-1265. Open for lunch Monday through Saturday, for dinner nightly. Full bar. Valet parking. American Express, MasterCard and Visa accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $15 - $49.