RESTAURANT REVIEW : Belle-Vue: New Chef, Old-Time French Taste

“The Belle-Vue,” said the foodies. “You’re really going to the Belle-Vue?”

“It’s supposed to have a new chef.”

“The Belle-Vue!” Meaning, that place in Santa Monica that’s been around since the Flood, or at least since there were vacant lots on Ocean Avenue. That old folks’ restaurant specializing in antique ideas about French food.

This may be a prejudice, but it’s one with some truth to it. When you’ve been around as long as the Belle-Vue, which is since 1936, you keep a lot of customers through the years. You offer them an Early Bird dinner from 4:30 to 6. You have chintz curtains and a very cozy bar and motherly American-style waitresses--some of whom, however, do have the traces of a French accent.

The Belle-Vue may have a new menu, as well as a new chef, but it has been understandably reluctant to tamper with success. And the differences between the old menu and the new one are slight. It’s still a place that honors dishes that were popular 40 or 50 years ago: sand dabs Veronique, trout amandine , vichyssoise soup.

The style is what was known as French Continental, but in 56 years various California traditions have also entered, such as celery and olives as an appetizer (that’ll be $3, cowboy). There’s a suggestion of old San Francisco in dishes like chicken saute au sec or the salad it calls the Palace Court, which is a garnished artichoke stuffed with crab. Simple-minded stuff, say the foodies, but regulars take their friends to the Belle-Vue for the express purpose of ordering them a Palace Court.

A lot of this is exactly the kind of cooking that foodies are afraid of finding: rich and diffuse, comfortable but clunky. Or worse. Personally, I wouldn’t go near the antipasto maison , a heap of vegetables mixed with dull tomato sauce and garnished with a sardine. And often dishes have misleading names. The menu lists a classic mushroom sauce called sauce forestiere , but my waitress referred to it as a tomato sauce.

What would a foodie go for here? Belle-Vue does have a classic crab cocktail with a vigorous, old-fashioned tomato horseradish sauce, and OK oysters Rockefeller (the oysters baked under a topping of anise-flavored spinach and cheese, in this version of a much-disputed dish), and an honest though not terribly rich clam chowder. The best appetizer is probably shrimp gauloise , shrimp lying on a bed of marinated leeks swathed in a thick, garlicky vinaigrette dressing.

The Belle-Vue’s most famous dish is its bouillabaisse , served only on Fridays. It is very good, a hearty and impressive soup of shrimp, clams, scallops, fish and lobster in a broth with a strong shellfish taste, full of onions and saffron. If there’s not enough fish flavor for you, you can put in some of what Belle-Vue calls rouille . (Here that word does not mean garlic-and-red pepper mayonnaise but anchovy-flavored mayonnaise.)

The sauteed rabbit can be ordered in a sort of Continental mustard cream sauce, which is pleasant in its plush, antique way. Unlike many restaurants that offer coq au vin and then serve you chicken briefly cooked in red wine, Belle-Vue evidently does cook its coq au vin quite a while, because the meat is nearly falling off the bones. The sauce includes onions and thick slices of meaty bacon, but has a faintly sour and sinister flavor, probably from the choice of wine it is cooked in.

Belle-Vue still keeps alive the hallowed names of lobster Thermidor and lobster Newburg. These dishes, based on the idea of making lobster richer than it is, were so fashionable at one time that many versions proliferated and all the books came to contradict each other about the correct recipes. Suffice it to say that at Belle-Vue, Newburg means chunks of lobster meat mixed with a cream sauce colored red-orange with, I suppose, mild paprika, and lobster Thermidor is served in the shell with a wine and cream sauce.

There are some French-type desserts, such as croquembouche , a brioche pastry filled with custard, or Grand Marnier cake rather like a petit four , with its cream filling encased in a paper-thin layer of chocolate. The best, though, are the most American. The carrot cake is very moist and has a judicious dose of cinnamon. The chocolate cake is wonderfully chocolatey, particularly the mousse-like decorations of bitter chocolate on top of the frosting.

Welcome to the new Belle-Vue. New, but a known quantity if there ever was one.

Belle-Vue French Restaurant, 101 Santa Monica Blvd., Santa Monica. (213) 393-2843. Open seven days for lunch, 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m.; dinner Monday through Thursday, 4:30-9:30 p.m., Friday and Saturday until 10 p.m. Full bar. Street parking. Major credit cards. Dinner for two, food only, $40-$75.