L’Escale Dining Beginning to Live Up to View

A guest at L’Escale, a dining room at the Le Meridien hotel in Coronado, lounged in her chair and pointed a languid finger at the ever-more-grand San Diego skyline rising across the bay.

“We live in such a beautiful city, and it looks its best from right here,” she said.

San Diego really does look its best from Coronado. The pity is that there are so few public places from which to catch the view.

For a price, L’Escale offers its patrons one of the finest vantage points--framed by striped umbrellas, palm trees and an artificial but artful stream. This restaurant, split between an outdoor terrace and a large dining room, recently has given face lifts to both its decor and menu to make them rather more worthy of the view.

Le Meridien is virtually a brand-new hotel, having just passed the two-year mark this year. But it still seems odd that it should have taken this long to get its larger dining room under control. The smaller Marius, which has no view to distract diners, from the beginning earned a place among the top five eateries in the county. L’Escale, however, started out on a disappointing note, although now it seems much improved.

The former air of a rather grand coffee shop has been replaced by the mood of a real restaurant, especially at night, when a guitar-and-harp duo pick out complicated harmonies that suggest palm trees and moonlight, features that the terrace tables enjoy in abundance.

The more important and dramatic change is in the menu, which has been thoroughly upgraded. It now emphasizes seafood and is written daily to take advantage of opportunities in the marketplace. It also is a good deal more expensive, except for some entree-sized salads and a couple of entrees that seem aimed primarily at in-house guests in search of light meals.

The hotel’s executive chef, French-born Roland Muller, now supervises the menu. The general tone of the list has been greatly elevated; there is much that is stylish, innovative or novel, though the delivery still is not always perfect.

The cold appetizer list on the whole takes a back seat to the hot offerings, among which are highly seasoned baked clams topped with ratatouille (a very clever change of pace) and a plate of roasted lamb loin slices dressed with a stew of shiitake mushrooms. The crab cakes placed on a spicy beurre blanc flavored with cilantro come off as a provocative variation on classic Maryland crab cakes.

The virtue of Maryland cakes is their sheer delicacy, which in effect takes the point of view that crab should be allowed to be crab. The L’Escale version, mercifully shy on bread crumbs but nonetheless butter-fried to a fine crispness, nicely localizes the dish with hot peppers and cilantro, and the cakes are quite good.

There also is a local note to the cold starter of sea bass marinated in lime, coriander and olive oil; other choices in this department are paupiettes , or bundles of green beans wrapped in smoked salmon, and home-cured gravad lax , a Scandinavian specialty of raw salmon matured in sugar, pepper and dill.

By unwritten statute, hotel dining rooms are expected to serve satisfying soups to weary travelers. Although that description may not fit Le Meridien’s mostly on-vacation guests, a recently sampled lentil soup flecked with bits of chopped tomato lived up to expectations.

Only two entrees from the long and interesting list were sampled. Among choices missed were grilled swordfish with baby spinach and fennel (a rather teasing combo with this meatiest of fish); orange roughy, which might be billed a “new” fish, reposing in a very classic crayfish sauce; grilled rainbow trout with lime beurre blanc sauce; sculpin baked in a tomato-herb crust, and roasted veal rack with a sauce of herbs and fresh plums.

Veal chops are quite fashionable now, but often very bland. The attraction of the meat, as most chefs seem to recognize, is its tenderness. The point that a good number of chefs seem to miss is that veal is like a headwaiter in a fancy restaurant: Many of us like both best when they have an accent. L’Escale served a handsome grilled chop with an excellent pale brown sauce boldly flavored with star anise, a spice that brought an exciting note to the festivities. A bit of good, creamy potato gratin and a few carefully sauteed vegetables completed the plate.

The grandest item, the bouillabaisse, received a warm recommendation from a server, which was the warmest thing about it. The soup-stew arrived tepid, was sent back to the kitchen for a second go at the stove and returned barely hotter. The great thing about a bouillabaisse is the broth, which captures the essences of all the seafoods cooked in it and combines them with its own traditional perfumes of aromatic vegetables, saffron and, sometimes, fennel. The broth serves as a sauce for the fish and shellfish and then, after these have been dispatched, as a soup, at which point it takes on a life of its own if the kitchen has sent along a dish of rouille , a rich mayonnaise spiced with dried red pepper and, sometimes, garlic.

There was not a great deal of broth with this bouillabaisse, but what there was of it was terrific down to the last dribble scraped up from the bottom of the bowl. The rouille included more garlic than expected but was likable and certainly served its purpose, a sort of mysterious alchemy effect that makes the broth sparkle.

The seafood itself, however, seemed to have given its all to the broth. The collection included a small half-tail of local lobster, limp and stringy; a few chunks of fish; mussels and clams that seemed utterly exhausted and, finally, a few fat prawns that had retained their flavor and texture. The impression was of a dish that had been cooked earlier and had waited longer than it cared to.

This one disappointment was not effaced by the pastry tray, but the tray had many merits, especially a large chunk of marjolaine , a pastry that masquerades as a layer cake but has a much more sophisticated nature. Sheets of meringue both separate layers of chocolate, mocha and vanilla creams and give definition to their rich, competing flavors.

As a nicety, L’Escale serves a basket filled with excellent Parmesan twists and a loaf of finely textured, firm-crusted bread. The wine list, however, is brief and seems almost a joke. The solution for anyone who wants to choose among more than a dozen or so bottles is to ask for the captain’s list, which shows off Le Meridien at the top of its very French form and gives an excellent survey of both California and imported vintages.

L’ESCALE

Le Meridien hotel, 2000 2nd St., Coronado

435-3000

Breakfast, lunch and dinner daily.

Credit cards accepted.

Dinner for two, including a glass of wine each, tax and tip, $40 to $100.