RESTAURANT REVIEW : Lautrec Offers a Feast of Contradictions

Lautrec, for some unknown reason named for the French painter, is a ski lodge-style restaurant situated in a handsomely treed setting on Ventura Boulevard just west of Topanga Canyon Boulevard in Woodland Hills.

As at a winter resort, many tables are positioned as if to take maximum advantage of a striking mountainside view, which it of course doesn’t have. These are just two of the contradictions that seem to characterize this elaborately done-up effort at fancy--but not formal--dining.

The principal discord is between the menu’s claim of “Gourmet California Dining” and what it actually offers: a mixture of traditional butter-sauce dishes and some grilled items. California cooking, of course, assertively avoids heavy butter and cream sauces, but then the outdated word gourmet is a signal that the aspirations here aren’t exactly trend-setting.

Veal Oscar, for example, is so over-elaborate, it seems a parody of haute cuisine: Veal filets are sauteed in butter and covered with asparagus and bits of crab leg in a palate-numbing bearnaise sauce. Among the appetizers, clams Setoise , topped with bacon, crab and Parmesan cheese and oven-browned in their shells, is also too complicated. Individual flavors are lost, and the combined taste is strong but murky. However, the flavor of the excellent beef used in the carpaccio comes through . . . as long as you push aside most of the overpowering mustard sauce and capers it comes with.

Two radically different appetizers were the most successful. The tuna sashimi plate (which might qualify as “California dining” but is really more Japanese) was an agreeable surprise: A thick patty of chopped maguro on a bed of greens was topped with what seemed to be flying-fish roe. Its simplicity was refreshing. More elaborate, but not excessively so, were the champignons en papillote. A melange of wild mushrooms, cooked in parchment with garlic, white wine and butter, had the satisfying richness of French country cooking.

Between courses I had a few moments to ponder the restaurant’s name. Although the walls bear a couple of reproductions of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s works, those of Renoir and other painters are actually more prominently displayed. Before I could resolve this conundrum I was tasting an entree that confirmed that tradition--at least well-handled tradition--still has a valid place in the kitchen.

It was calf’s liver sauteed in a garlic and shallot sauce, and it proved to be the dish that pleased me the most at this restaurant. This is great praise since liver is so easily mistreated. When cut thin, as it was at Lautrec, liver requires special care to keep it pink and moist and tasty. The kitchen came through here.

Another success was the traditional roast rack of lamb (for two) with tarragon sauce. As my dinner companion said, “For $46, it had better be good.” It was. But in truth, for that price I expected the rack to be served intact, the chops carved apart table-side. Instead, the two of us received three medium-sized chops on a plate with vegetables and potatoes. Even though we enjoyed the lamb, we were disappointed by its presentation. And by the vegetables: bland steamed mini-squashes and butter and cream-heavy scalloped potatoes (how anti-California cooking can you get?). What’s more, this banal vegetable-potato arrangement never varied from plate to plate or from day to day.

All this self-possessed and hardly light cooking kept me hoping that the whole place would magically be transported to some wooded mountainside so that the view beyond the trees would be of skiers on snowy slopes instead of cars on the boulevard. Still, Lautrec is handsome in its way--reinterpreted early-century saloon with shiny brass fittings and thick etched glass partitions. And the service is attentive, the wine list interesting and the chairs comfortable.

Recommended dishes: champignons en papillote, $9.95; calf’s liver with garlic and shallots, $15.95; rack of lamb (for two), $46.

Lautrec, 22160 Ventura Blvd., Woodland Hills. (818) 704-1185. Open daily for lunch 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., dinner 5 to 10 p.m. Full bar. Valet parking. Major credit cards accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $39 to $85.