Maitre D’ Takes Menu Back to Czarist Russia

One of the many perks that went with having VIP status in Czarist Russia was that, sooner or later, a particularly delectable dish would be named in your honor.

A list of the choicest Russian dishes reads like a page from the St. Petersburg social register: coupe Romanov (vanilla ice cream, strawberries and liqueurs), beef stroganoff (the Russians did not then and do not now make it with canned mushroom soup) and crepes Ovanesoff, or feathery pancakes stuffed with raspberries macerated in curacao. Even the bourgeoisie occasionally figured in the nomenclature game, as in the endearing kotleti Pojarski, named for a famous innkeeper credited with creating these breaded meat patties in creamy paprika sauce.

Travelers to the Soviet Union grumble that the cooking now is quite a bit less than aristocratic, and, although no dish has been named officially for Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, it is easy enough to guess that, given the current food shortages, various mystery meat concoctions may well have been dubbed in his honor.

The fact is, however, that classic Russian cooking can be superb. It also is quite difficult to find, but La Jolla’s Maitre D’, usually a bastion of French haute cuisine, has written a lengthy menu of classic dishes for its monthlong Russian food festival. The festival opened last week and will conclude Nov. 19, and, although the restaurant does not claim any affiliation with the city’s Soviet arts festival, the timing obviously is not coincidental.

Two months ago, Maitre D’ proprietor Louis Zalesjak filled a crock with peaches, grapes, apples and Stolichnaya vodka and allowed it to steep while he, his partner and their chef, French-born Jean Michel Carre, flew away on a six-week tour of Europe that included a stay in the Soviet Union. The resulting brew, based on a recipe from the august Imperial Hotel in Vienna, carries a wallop under its veil of fruited fragrance and is offered by itself or as a de rigueur accompaniment to an order of caviar and blinis.

The stay in the Soviet Union offered Carre a chance to fine-tune the menu, which concentrates primarily on the grand dishes of the old days, with a few Georgian offerings--Georgian cooking is highly respected in the U.S.S.R.--thrown in to balance the often rich and creamy Russian entries. However, because many of the grand dishes were created by French chefs in the employ of powerful families, Carre must have found them familiar, as should anyone acquainted with French cuisine. Sour cream typically enriches sauces, which tend to be more highly seasoned than French and often include much paprika and onion.

The menu opens with zakuski , the Russian word for hors d’oeuvres that usually signifies a whole buffet of nibbles to be browsed as a prelude to dinner. Maitre D’ instead serves them by the individual order, and the choice is good, beginning with the classic Osetrina of smoked sturgeon wrapped in the buttery, yeast-raised pancakes called blini. Sirniki , a Georgian mouthful, is good-looking but a little bland; it takes the shape of a great wedge of crisp phyllo pastry wrapped around a cottage cheese stuffing.

Other choices include a rich liver paste ( pastete ); piroski , or small butter pastries filled with highly seasoned chopped meat; thinly sliced smoked pork loin on a bed of pita bread, and an exquisite, Moscow-style borscht. This last, reddened with beets and enriched with cabbage, celery, onions and a spoon of sour cream, is based on a beef consomme of such clarity and depth that the flavors almost seem visible, rather like fish swimming through a shaft of light in a deep mountain lake.

The menu would not be Russian without caviar, and it offers five, beginning with golden caviar and progressing, in terms of choiceness and price, through red, pressed Beluga, Sevruga and fresh Beluga. Caviar is, in the end, caviar--not much can be done to it, and it was not sampled. But the restaurant makes a grand show of presenting it in a foot-tall silver egg, which opens to reveal a glass raft, laden with the precious eggs and floating among tiny floes of crushed ice. Blinis and iced vodka arrive on the side, and the prices for an ounce of the extravagant stuff range from $12 to $35.

Kulibiac heads the entree list. This famous dish (which does not, however, appear to have been named for a famous individual) is a sort of salmon Wellington and consists of layers of richly sauced fish alternating with rice and chopped mushrooms inside a case of puff pastry. Sibirsi pelmeny are very typical of everyday Georgian cooking, although Maitre D’ gives these tortellini-like pasta rounds a dandy finish with a sauce of sour cream, beef stock and dill. The minced meat stuffing is flavored with grated lemon peel and much garlic, and in Georgia would also include a great deal of cayenne pepper, a seasoning the restaurant chose to suppress in deference to local sensibilities.

So many dishes are based on chopped meat--beef, lamb and veal, alone or in combination--that the preparations sometimes seem as much Turkish or Greek as Russian. Given the nearness of these lands, the culinary similarities are unsurprising. The bitoski , or breaded patties of veal ground with butter, are particularly elegant under their cloak of stroganoff-like brown sauce. Similar dishes include the Pojarski cutlet, based on beef and veal and dressed with a highly seasoned sour cream sauce, and the humbler but tasty stuffed cabbage rolls. The Luli kebab combines chopped beef and lamb in patties, which are broiled on a skewer.

Zalesjak was born to a hotel-owning family in Yugoslavia, trained at Swiss hotel schools and has been maitre d’ (hence the restaurant’s name) at important hotel dining rooms in New York, Montreal, Bangkok and elsewhere. He likes to make a great show of serving. Flaming dishes generally are dismissed these days as all pomp and no circumstance, but this point of view forgets that tableside cooking, when done properly, can produce exquisite results. Zalesjak flamed a skewer of beef “troika” at table--and danced a quick Cossack step as he did so--and the resulting cubes of marinated filet were, in fact, delicious. The burning brandy sealed the meat and set the flavor, which was picked up further by a thin but sharp brown sauce.

The desserts tend to be simple but rich, and the blinchiki , or thin pancakes filled with sour cherries, are particularly nice. Sour cream is served on the side, but by this point in the meal it seems a little too much of a good thing.

The restaurant has hired a pair of musicians, including a former professor of music at Moscow University, for the duration of its Russian food festival, and the musical mix is a delight. The tempo changes from Tchaikovsky on the piano to Edith Piaf standards on the accordion and violin, and, believe it or not, balalaika renderings of “Those Were the Days” slipped in among the Russian folk tunes.

Most appetizers and desserts are in the $5 range, and most entrees are priced at $15. The wine list, which from a connoisseur’s point of view is a marvel, features very, very few moderate bottles, and the bill can rise accordingly. Dinner for two with house wine, tax and tip should cost about $65 to $90.

MAITRE D’

5523 La Jolla Blvd., La Jolla

456-2111

Dinner served Tuesday through Saturday; closed Sunday and Monday.

Credit cards accepted.

Reservations suggested.