RESTAURANT REVIEW : Intimate Dining at Romantic Camille’s in Sherman Oaks

Every raspberry is in place at Camille’s, Sherman Oaks’ permanent entry in the great little neighborhood restaurant sweepstakes. The chef sees to it personally, thank you.

This is one of those romantic restaurants that sprang up in the late ‘70s when intimate dining was still in bloom. It’s all fussy white linen and flowers, with pink stucco walls full of decorous prints that look as if they might have been assembled by the Junior League. There are three latticed booths in back, swathed in dark green for extra privacy, ideal for secret trysts.

The very fact that this place is still around is some kind of testimonial to its charm, when so many of its contemporaries have gone through incarnations from Cajun to Cambodian by now. The original chef is still there too, and that goes a long way toward explaining the restaurant’s longevity.

He is Peter Schawalder, a Viennese artiste with a talent for beautiful plate imagery and delicate sauces. His dishes are so meticulously crafted that you hope no one is watching when you start destroying them with your fork: perfect, plump asparagus in proper formation, uniform rivulets of sauce, raspberries so gorgeous that you’d think the chef had his own bushes in the back.

He’s a perfectionist, and obviously the type who can roll with the punches. The food he serves is hardly trendy, yet it doesn’t seem dated, either. Most of it has a timeless quality, despite occasional bows to California, such as whitefish in grapefruit coulis, and sentimental voyages to pre-war Europe: lamb chops with silly paper crowns. The bottom line is, it all tastes pretty good.

Take the medallions of pork on the lunch menu: lightly grilled pork with sauerkraut, garnished with a perfectly cut boiled potato, some baby carrots and a wonderfully rich sauce made from the natural juices of the pork. It’s hardly a revelation, but something you can almost always work up an appetite for.

Or how about a soup like green pea puree, a finely textured version with the honest taste of fresh peas? That kind of dish never goes out of style.

You might begin with one of the chef’s hors d’oeuvres, such as a glazed gratin d’escargots , or a fatty, subtly flavored duck pate, more like rillettes than pate. One evening I tried his refreshing chilled melon soup, a dessert-like concoction made from cantaloupe, orange peel and fresh mint, swirled with cream and pureed strawberries. Perhaps it was too sweet for a first course, but I would have loved it at lunch.

Don’t make the mistake of starting with the hors d’oeuvres varies, as I did. The chef struggled bravely with it, but it was really nothing more than Executive Class airplane food: lobster meat that tasted as if it had been frozen, smoked salmon, smoked trout, hard-boiled egg with shrimps and caviar, even canned olives in the garnish.

Selections from the classic repertory of dinner dishes dominate the menu here: noisette of veal with marrow and morels, grilled breast of duck, sweetbreads topped with foie gras , various fresh fish. Lamb chops, three to an order, fully live up to one’s expectations. Although plainly grilled with herbs, they are cooked a point and quite juicy. My poached sea bass, tranche de loup de mer , was slightly overcooked, but the ethereal Champagne sauce more than compensated.

There is a limited selection of desserts at Camille’s; all are made on the premises. The ones I tried were sensational. Schawalder’s airy, lemony homemade cheesecake reinforced my belief that the ones from commercial bakeries sold to big restaurants (chocolate, amaretto, etc.) really do taste like glue. Then there’s his personal interpretation of Sachertorte , the rich Viennese chocolate cake with thick frosting and an apricot filling. He doesn’t scribble “Sacher” on top in chocolate handwriting the way they do at the Hotel Sacher in Vienna, but it’s at least as good as the version I had there. Maybe even better.

A word about service. Maitre d’ Reginald Thomas has been with Schawalder since the beginning, and is an able and gracious host. But I did experience a glitch in service unworthy of a class act like Camille’s.

I had ordered a plate of smoked trout with horseradish sauce for lunch, and as an afterthought asked the waiter to bring something from the menu called assorted salads. He brought the salad plate, all right--the very same salads the chef had used to garnish the trout. Objections were raised, but no one offered to take it back, or to have it removed it from the check.

I doubt that goofs like that happen very often at Camille’s. That’s not the kind of raspberry that keeps a restaurant open for 11 years.

Camille’s, 13573 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks, (818) 995-1660. Lunch 11:45 a.m.-2 p.m. Tuesday-Friday, dinner 6-9:30 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday; closed Sunday and Monday. Beer and wine. Limited parking in rear. All major cards. Dinner for two, food only, $60-$90.