RESTAURANT REVIEW : A Traditional French Kitchen at Marina Bistro

“Let’s get the scrambled eggs with caviar,” said the tiny cookbook author who writes the big huge books.

Touche. We were in the patio of the Marina Bistro, a gentle, dainty, old-fashioned French restaurant--its symbol is a violet orchid--and the tiny cookbook writer was out-ordering me something fierce.

Her “scrambled” eggs, for instance, were technically “blurred” ( oeufs brouilles ), stirred continuously to get a fine-grained texture but cooked over water so they stay creamy instead of drying out. In fact, these could have been a shade creamier, but they were much better with caviar than the usual chopped hard-cooked eggs, and a shrewder appetizer idea than anything I’d thought of.

I liked the idea of snails in red wine, but tiny person plumped for a special of snails in puff pastry. They turned out to be--of course--plump snails, among the tenderest I’ve ever had, in a simple but impressive sauce of cream boiled down a little with garlic and sprinkled with chives. Touche again.

My best suggestion was zucchini soup, just because I happened to know the Marina Bistro makes excellent vegetable soups with no cream, nothing but pureed vegetable enriched with a bit of butter and a characteristic dose of black pepper. This is a kitchen that likes its black pepper.

This is also a very traditional kitchen, with a chef who used to work in Paris at Petrus and the Plaza Athenee. Very few of his dishes couldn’t have been found on any French menu 20 years ago. The only nearly trendy things are 10 years old: funny-colored peppercorns in one dish, raspberry vinegar in one salad, and a bit of the mania for pureed and/or stuffed vegetables. Little cylinders of zucchini filled with winter squash puree, for instance.

Other parties were having their own fun in the plants and latticework environment of the dining patio, laughing and holding hands and that sort of stuff, but at our table serious food discussion raged. The cookbook writer surprisingly suggested that somebody have jambonnette de volaille au homard , which is about the cheapest entree on the menu. This is simply a stuffed boned chicken drumstick in a sauce of cream and reduced lobster broth, but it was unusually good, the stuffing a light and refreshing hash of chopped leeks instead of the usual ground meat.

I had a grilled prime rib, but it was simply bravado on my part to order meat. Mostly, I know the fish entrees on this menu: say, a grilled tuna steak with beurre rouge , which is a strong reduction of red wine plus butter and plenty of black pepper. Fortunately, my prime rib was very good in its strong, old-fashioned Cabernet sauce.

Unfortunately, when it came to her own order, the tiny cookbook writer picked the bouillabaisse (available only on Fridays and Saturdays). She had just been talking about how one of the differences between bouillabaisse and Italian cioppino is that the former isn’t supposed to include shellfish when the bouillabaisse came, in a showy shell-shaped bowl . . . and it was mostly shellfish. Furthermore, there was a bitter, iodine taste in the broth, possibly the fault of some mussels that seemed past their prime.

Her luck was running out. The chocolate souffle--not my suggestion--was the kind we expect in this country, slightly overdone and faintly rubbery so the waiter can pour chocolate sauce and whipped cream into it, although this is hard on its souffle quality. The tiny cookbook writer herself got stuck with a creme brulee (which, as she pointed out, the French consider an English dish) with a sugar crust that, as she also pointed out, was crystallized but not quite caramelized.

I had started feeling an ignorant bystander, but I actually got the best of the desserts: a cylindrical pralin tart with caramel frosting and a hidden charge of chocolate in the bottom. There is a certain justice in this world; wisdom, or even better, the appearance of wisdom, comes to anyone who waits long enough.

Marina Bistro, 3100 Washington Blvd., Marina del Rey; (213) 822-2020. Open for dinner Monday through Saturday. Full bar. Parking lot in rear. All major credit cards accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $48-$73.