RESTAURANT REVIEW : An Adventure Takes Root in Pasadena

When it comes right down to it, what has Santa Monica got that Pasadena hasn’t? Pasadena’s got museums, professional-class people, no-growth and all that. Sure, it doesn’t have a beach, but it actually has some history, and that’s got to count for something.

Evidently where it lags is in the restaurant department. Only slowly has Pasadena been crawling out of the era when its most famous dining places were cafeterias. The problem has been a certain deficit in the spirit of adventure.

Now the Oaks on the Plaza, the restaurant at the new Doubletree Hotel, is coming to the rescue. It’s grand and soothing and spacious (let’s see Santa Monica top it for spaciousness, in fact), with big flower arrangements, an immense display kitchen and a ceiling filled with billows of fabric. It’s remarkably reasonable. And adventuresome? You can practically hear the kitchen spraining its imagination to come up with this so-called “Aggressive California” menu that combines French, Italian, Basque, Cajun, Japanese and Mexican.

The result has splendor about it, but some of the adventures go awry. For instance, there’s a sort of yaki soba corner on the menu, and while the buckwheat noodles and their chicken, shrimp or vegetable accompaniments are delicious, the noodles have a slight orange flavor. This is a charming idea at first, but it gets a little old by the time you’re down to the last noodle.

The Basque three-bean soup is a richly flavored combination of beans and lentils with thick lamb stock. However, on one occasion the soup of the day, said to be gumbo, turned out to be more like the Cantonese dish juk , a thin rice porridge with bits of sweet pepper and pork sausage in it. And chicken with sage jus is hard to characterize exactly: cuisine minceur , spa food, hospital food? It’s chicken breast with nothing but light sage-flavored broth for a sauce.

But let’s talk about the splendid adventures for a while. There’s a substantial appetizer of lamb medallions with walnuts and balsamic vinegar that could have come from medieval Baghdad. Another impressive combination of aristocratic flavors is veal in a dry sherry sauce with walnuts and lemon peel. Lamb with pinot noir and figs sounds bizarre, but the sauce is really a thick, dark reduction of wine and meat juices with just an exotic hint of fig.

Fish in a potato jacket usually means fish fried between layers of julienned potato, like the Swiss dish rosti with fish in the middle. At the Oaks, the effect is fish sauteed with potatoes, but it is certainly luscious with its delicate whiskey-flavored butter sauce.

The best dessert seems to be espresso pot-au-creme , like an espresso-flavored creme caramel with a tiny Stonehenge of almond slivers on it and a little pot of thick, hot chocolate sauce on the side. By comparison, the Basque cake is excessively homey, a plain cake with slices of apple mixed in the dough. There are also a goat cheese cheesecake and a sort of miniature baked Alaska filled with . . . peppermint ice cream. At the same time it manages to be a 7-year-old’s nightmare and a 7-year-old’s dream.

Pasadena can hold its head up. The Oaks is as splendid and cockeyed as anything Santa Monica has to offer.

The Oaks on the Plaza, Doubletree Hotel, 191 N. Los Robles Ave., Pasadena. (818) 792-2727. Open for breakfast, lunch and dinner daily. Full bar (with tapas). Validated parking in lot on Union Street. All major credit cards accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $40-$57.