Conservative French Fare Proved to Be Just What Public Ordered

According to the accepted wisdom of the trade, restaurateurs who break all the rules end up washing dishes at establishments owned by people who know how the game is played.

A little eatery opened two years ago in a quiet corner of Uptown San Diego, rather far from any of the established restaurant rows and endowed with both an unmemorable, six-word name and a menu that ignored the pasta-and-fish movement in favor of the almost archaic standbys of French cuisine bourgeoise . To the surprise of many observers, if not of the proprietors, it turned out to be exactly what a substantial slice of the public had been waiting for.

The French Side of the West--there probably are restaurants with odder names, but none springs readily to mind--recently doubled its seating capacity, the better to accommodate a regular clientele that had made it necessary to reserve a table up to three days in advance for week nights and up to three weeks ahead for Fridays and Saturdays.

There are not many San Diego restaurants that can boast of such strong demand for reservations, for which there is a simple reason: When it opened in 1988, the French Side offered a menu of four well-cooked courses for a set price of $12.50. The price has gone up since then, and will reach $16.50 in June, but meals continue to open with a savory selection of charcuterie and move along to sorbet , then to a simple salad or robust soup, to such simple but pleasing entrees as coq au vin , boeuf bourguignonne and veau normand, and finally to grandmotherly sweets such as profiteroles and iles flottants .

With its rough rock walls, beamed ceiling, hanging coppers, blazing hearth and candlelight, the French Side attempts to create the ambience of a French country inn. Whether it quite succeeds in this might be debated, but the mood recently prompted the management to mimic the practice of such inns and introduce a second, more sophisticated (and more expensive) prix fixe menu.

This “gourmet” list, priced at $26.50, includes an almost mind-boggling eight courses and a much grander selection of entrees, among them duck sauced with sour cherries, frog legs in the style of Bresse (a strong sauce of garlic, parsley and cream) and crayfish bordelaise. These dishes may be rather more formal, but they remain well within the old French tradition; not the slightest nouvelle nicety or nonsense has intruded here.

A meal from each list was sampled recently, and each came off quite happily. The introduction to the meal still arrives in advance of the menu and sets a good tone; this is the charcuterie plate, a varying selection of homemade pates augmented by excellent French salami ( saucisson de Lyons), a chunk of Brie, olives and the tiny, sour pickles called cornichons .

Chef Guy Naltet recently offered several lovely pates, and a taste of his coarse-textured country pate taken with a bite of cornichon and a little excellent bread was a fine experience. He also offered two versions of rillettes , or creamy pork paste, one flavored with curry and the other with pine nuts, and a remarkable, jellied head cheese of sublimely earthy flavor. This was followed by a mixed berry sorbet .

A server had said that the portions would be small, but the management evidently failed to inform Naltet, because a thick, deeply flavored cream of vegetables arrived in such quantity that anyone who ate his way to the bottom of the bowl might have felt inclined to dispense with the rest of the meal.

But it was good, with the deep, round flavor that one wants in a soup and that, quite to the point, characterizes most of the cooking at the French Side.

The gourmet menu at this juncture diverged to offer yet another starter, a choice among snails in puff pastry, smoked salmon or a slice of truffled foie gras , the extravagant goose liver that, with caviar, ranks among the world’s costliest foods. The restaurant served a good, fat slice of foie gras , the richness cut somewhat by the traditional garnish of chopped aspic that surrounded it.

From the basic entree list of salmon in beurre blanc , creamed sweetbreads, filet mignon in a choice of three sauces, rabbit in white sauce and other relatively simple dishes, one diner chose the chicken breast chasseur . This sauce (which, by the way, is the French version of the sauce Italians call cacciatore) went a little too heavy on the tomato and rather too light on the mushrooms, but the chicken breast it covered was tender and succulent in the degree that only French cooks seem able to achieve. This portion was also quite large, and the plate garnish, furthermore, included a variety of vegetables in addition to a hefty serving of nutmeg-scented gratin dauphinoise , or sliced potatoes baked in cream.

The gourmet diner, meanwhile, had ordered the pigeon Clamart and felt vaguely like a pigeon, since this portion actually was tiny and the few bites that could be pried off the scrawny, bony bird were not only tough but tasteless. The sauce was exquisite, however, and, although it could not do much for the bird, it was magnificent with the wonderful Clamart garnish of a fresh, braised artichoke bottom stuffed with tiny peas.

Among entree alternatives on the gourmet side of the menu are veal chop in mushroom sauce; a large filet in real sauce bearnaise (the genuine article is hard to find locally); quail with grapes and juniper berries and sea bass, served on a slice of buttery brioche and finished with a complicated red wine sauce.

A simple caveat about ordering the gourmet menu: When you’ve finished the entree, you’re nowhere near done with dinner. The server next brings out a handsome tray of six or seven cheeses, and serves any that you wish along with a large, crisp salad in raspberry vinaigrette. French meals traditionally include cheese at this point, and it is a fine custom; the selection here includes a good Morbier, sweetly pungent Roquefort, aged goat cheese and fresh cow’s cheese coated in herbs.

The kitchen does show a little restraint at the end by limiting the dessert tray to small servings of chocolate mousse, caramel custard, poached egg whites in caramel ( iles flottants ) and profiteroles , or small ice cream-stuffed puffs drizzled with chocolate sauce. These are all classics, and the French Side does them well.

If the French Side seems a little (if quite agreeably) chauvinistic about its menu, it expands upon this attitude with the wine list, which utterly excludes California bottles in favor of a surprisingly long and well-balanced survey of French vintages. There is a sufficiency of choice on the moderately priced end of the scale, and the list generally complements the menu quite well.

DAVID NELSON ON RESTAURANTS

* THE FRENCH SIDE OF THE WEST

2202 4th Ave.

234-5540

Dinner served nightly from 5 p.m.

Credit cards accepted.