DAVID NELSON ON RESTAURANTS : Jake’s South Bay Does the Beach Tradition Proud, the Rice Pilaf Poorly

Someday, some scholar of immense erudition and rare insight is going to write a study of the California beach restaurant, and, when that happens, the new Jake’s South Bay on the Chula Vista waterfront will very possibly be included as a highly refined, late-20th-Century example of this unique style of eatery.

The last California beach restaurant, whenever and wherever it may be built, will not only offer the unique rice preparation that these places, and these alone, are pleased to call “rice pilaf,” but also the beloved filet mignon/frozen lobster tail combination that is usually garnished with it. Jake’s offers these requisite specialties, along with a primarily seafood menu that does include a few meat offerings.

There is also a unique style of service specific to the California beach restaurant, and, if the busboys at Jake’s aren’t quite the surfer dudes of yesteryear, they at least give a fair imitation. Their service is at times a fascinating combination of cheerful good intentions absolutely unguided by any sense of how to bus a table.

The waitresses do somewhat better, but also seem quite at sea at certain crucial moments. Even so, there is nonetheless a charm to the service that could never be duplicated by haughty, French-trained, professional waiters.

Jake’s opened in late December and is owned by TS Restaurants, which also owns Jake’s Del Mar and Charlie’s in Cardiff. There is a good, solid beach restaurant tradition here, since TS co-founder Sandy Saxten started his career in 1966 as a waiter at Chuck’s Steak House in Hawaii and now presides over a sizable chain of places in Southern California, Hawaii and Lake Tahoe. All are within a stone’s throw of the water.

Some recipes repeat from place to place, and guests at Jake’s South Bay generally enjoy a good price break; for example, the dish of scallops with macadamias that costs $9.95 in Chula Vista runs $14.95 at the chain’s Kapalua Bar & Grill on Maui.

Appetizers are few and in the beach mode, and include such things as a steamed artichoke, ceviche, shrimp cocktail, raw oysters and a less-typical batch of grilled oysters, which take on a distinct and rather pleasant flavor from the charcoal grill. They arrive doused with some sort of inept butter sauce that seems, at heart, to want to be a French beurre blanc , but, because the sauce slips right off the bivalves, no harm is done.

The menu also includes a brief, inexpensive “cafe” section that is rare for this sort of place but quite welcome. The offerings here run to a steak sandwich; a chicken sandwich that, for better or worse, is seasoned with Cajun spices; a fairly dressy cheeseburger; a seafood salad, and what the menu calls a “gourmet” pizza, which is decorated with chorizo, onions, olives, mushrooms and cheese.

Meals also include the choice of clam chowder or what is described as “house” Caesar salad, which means a fairly good if rather dry imitation of the real thing. It is pleasant and generously served, as is the chowder, a creamed soup thick with potatoes, bacon, celery and clams that tilts a touch to the peppery side and is finished with a little thyme, which only lately has become traditional in chowder but certainly heightens the flavor.

The entree list opens with a few daily seafood specials--the more extravagant offerings, such as salmon and Maine lobster, appear here--and proceeds directly to the “fresh fish Cajun style,” a dish that certainly would have been a California beach restaurant classic if ersatz Cajun cooking had not been invented so long after the advent of beach restaurants. A second offering that also utilizes whatever fresh fish the kitchen has in plenitude on any given day is the “fresh fish Veracruz,” which finishes the chosen poisson with tomato sauce spiked with garlic, jalapeno peppers and green olives.

The dinner list continues with scampi, one of the three true icons of beach cooking and a dish that, like rice pilaf and steak and lobster, certainly has a devoted and almost devout following. Scampi is one of the few dishes that seems to taste exactly the same everywhere (the white wine, butter and garlic that flavor the dish are not subject to the slightest modification), and anyone who has enjoyed this dish elsewhere will like it at Jake’s. The portion, however, consists of just five medium-size shrimp, which makes this a rather skimpy scampi.

It is de rigueur to have rice pilaf with this (although the steak fries are a great deal more satisfactory), and the rice is every bit as gooey and indifferently flavored as the Beach Restaurant Master Recipe dictates. There must be a school somewhere that teaches beginning beach cooks how to prepare this unique, stewed rice.

The scallops macadamia actually are breaded and browned, and the nut flavor seems mostly in the breading, which is a good place for it. This is a good dish and a tasty one, even if it is swimming in the same indeterminate butter sauce that dressed the grilled oysters. Because this sauce has virtually no flavor or body, it has little effect on the dish.

The menu takes a slightly Italian note with such dishes as the shrimp and chicken piccata (the sauce includes capers and white wine); the seafood pescatore , or fettuccine topped with fish and shellfish in a cheese-enriched white sauce, and cioppino, a typical offering of seafood cooked in broth-based tomato sauce.

Among meat offerings, there is a New York sirloin in a choice of green peppercorn or blue cheese sauces (both something of a departure from the menu’s general tone); chicken breast marinated in gingered soy sauce, and a platter of marinated, grilled New Zealand chops. At $17.95, the lamb is one of the most extravagant offerings, but the order sampled was extravagantly portioned, well-cooked and of good quality.

Desserts are of the simplest sort imaginable. The choice includes creme caramel and chocolate mousse and, at its most imaginative, a TS Restaurants chainwide special called Kimo’s Hula Pie that consists of high-rising ice cream layered in a cookie crust. Jake’s serves a lot of it.

The restaurant takes full advantage of its handsome waterfront setting and of the sweeping views across the bay to the Silver Strand and Point Loma. The place is built in the style of a turn-of-the-century boathouse, with a multitude of historic waterfront photos on the walls and peaked ceilings of rough-sawn wood whose loft spaces accommodate hanging skiffs and dories.

JAKE’S SOUTH BAY

570 Marina Parkway, Chula Vista

476-0400

Lunch and dinner daily.

Dinner for two, including a glass of wine each, tax and tip, $30 to $60.