San Diego Spotlight : New Downtown Hotel Grill Targets Pacific Rim Cuisine

The arrival on West Broadway of such dishes as coconut clam soup and duck breast in mango coulis more or less coincided with the closing of last tattoo parlor, and may well mean that the identity of this area as a roistering mecca for sailors on liberty has been mothballed with the same finality as some of the ships that used to dock at Broadway Pier.

This stretch of what old timers remember as D Street may-- may --be making its very first, very tentative effort at developing into the sort of international zone found in many large cities.

The initial hint that San Diego might someday develop such a district is spelled out on the menu of The Grill, the dining room at the Pan Pacific Hotel in the Emerald-Shapery Center. A subsidiary of Tokyu Corp. of Japan, Pan Pacific operates 17 of what it describes as luxury hotels around the Pacific Rim, from Malaysia and Indonesia to China, Canada and even the tiny island nation of Vanuatu.

At The Grill, this chain’s internationalism is expressed by a formal but noncommittal decor that shows no allegiance to locale and could as easily be off the lobby of one of the Pan Pacifics in Korea or Australia, and more succinctly through a menu written almost exclusively in the language of the relatively new Pacific Rim cuisine.

Pacific Rim cuisine may balk at compression into a nutshell, but the short definition is a sort of free-for-all combination of traditional foodstuffs and dishes from both shores of the Pacific, jumbled somewhat at will but generally guided by the precepts of French nouvelle cuisine . In Southern California at present, this usually comes out as a compilation of Japanese, Chinese, California and sometimes Southwestern and Mexican motifs, brought together by French sensibilities. At The Grill, it seems only reasonable that the kitchen is presided over by the German-born and trained Jan Rabe.

The entrees seem less imaginative than the opening courses, but all the dishes sampled at a recent dinner showed thoughtful and sometimes clever composition, with equal attention paid to flavor and appearance; most preparations are colorful and attractive.

The very first item shows what can be done when this cuisine faces hotel realities, such as the virtual necessity of offering a shrimp cocktail. Here, this is presented as tiger prawns with avocado relish and sweet-sour dipping sauce, a good example of Pacific Rim cooking operating on the most basic level.

The tempo zooms ahead with the British Columbia smoked salmon, a meltingly tender, utterly superior product, offered with the usual toasts and capers but also with a cream of cranberries and horseradish (much more subtle than it sounds) that draws the plate together quite deliciously. Also in an advanced mood is the blackened ahi sashimi, or rounds of this beef-like fish, not too annoyingly dusted with “Cajun” spices and barely seared, so that the flesh remains raw. It would have been better sliced more thinly.

The soy sauce and wasabi ( hot green horseradish paste) always served with Japanese-style raw fish join the plate, along with a wonderful chopped salad of cucumber and carrot pickled in the sweet oshinko style. Unsampled hot appetizers include black lobster ravioli in a Calvados-flavored lobster sauce, a curried chicken and vegetable egg roll with mango salad and, in The Grill’s one undeniably hotel-ish gesture, snails with herbs and garlic on a puff pastry base.

Besides the coconut clam soup, which conceivably could be exquisite but frankly sounds like a 21st-Century drug store counter creation, there is an Oriental gazpacho (the difference is in the selection of vegetables) and the Pacific seafood stew with tomato fennel broth. Unquestionably inspired by French bouillabaisse, this excellent dish combines New Zealand green lip mussels, shrimp and chunks of swordfish and ahi in a thick, surprisingly spicy broth topped with Chinese pea pods, shreds of Japanese seaweed and daikon , and Thai lemon grass. In a way, this stew represents the essence of Pacific Rim cuisine distilled in a bowl.

There is a fine, buttery quality to the chilled rare meat in the Thai beef salad, dressed up with puffy, noodle-like “long rice,” tomato wedges (for an American effect, presumably) and a nice dose of ginger in the dressing. Other teamings in the salad department are smoked duck breast with bok choy in pickled mango vinaigrette, and seaweed with abalone strips and sesame seed dressing. Like several other items marked by an asterisk, this is listed as a “light cuisine” dish.

The nine standing items are beef tenderloin with gingered garlic butter, cold poached salmon with red bell pepper and corn relish, shrimp and vegetable tempura and a chicken breast with chicken breast with black linguine and pink peppercorn sauce (this last may be aimed at California cuisine aficionados who have spent the last decade sound asleep).

This section gets its bearings better with grilled swordfish with corn-fried oysters and fresh salsa, and keeps on in the right direction with the sliced broiled duck breast with mango coulis (basically a thick puree) and sweet-sour lemon sauce. Presented virtually wrapped in mixed greenery, the duck had excellent flavor, showed attentive cooking and went well with its fruity but not sweet dressings.

The entree list seems rather too sedate by comparison; among the nine standing items are beef tenderloin with gingered garlic butter, cold poached salmon with red bell pepper and corn relish, shrimp and vegetable tempura and a chicken breast with chicken breast with black linguine and pink peppercorn sauce (this last may be aimed at California cuisine aficionados who have spent the last decade sound asleep).

This section gets its bearings better with grilled swordfish with corn-fried oysters and fresh salsa, and keeps on in the right direction with the sliced broiled duck breast with mango coulis (basically a thick puree) and sweet-sour lemon sauce. Presented virtually wrapped in mixed greenery, the duck had excellent flavor, showed attentive cooking and went well with its fruity but not sweet dressings. The dish seemed to make coy reference to French duck a l’orange , and easily got away with the gesture.

The winner among entrees may be the grilled lamb loin in hazelnut crust and star anise sauce, a handsome preparation of beautifully cooked lamb medallions, hidden under a delicate, crunchy topping and arranged around a fine stir-fry of broccoli, Japanese mushrooms and vegetables. The spicy note of the star anise entered the brown sauce with great subtlety.

The desserts by and large are eminently worth skipping. The Chinese sweet plum dumplings, described by a Japanese-born guest as typical of her homeland’s cuisine, were like elongated doughnuts with a mild filling, and were not bad. But the British Columbia “spicy apple band” lacked any special spice flavor and seemed an inferior sort of apple strudel. Deep-fried bananas with virtually tasteless ginger-sesame cream were notable mostly for the tough, disagreeable batter that weighed them down.

* The Grill

Pan Pacific Hotel, 400 W. Broadway, San Diego

239-4500

Breakfast, lunch and dinner daily

Dinner entrees $13.75 to $19.50. Dinner for two, including a moderate bottle of wine, tax and tip, about $70 to $110

Credit cards accepted