RESTAURANT REVIEW BERNADETTE’S : Cost-Effective : Coffee is steep at $3 a cup, but some of the menu’s simpler dishes are the best.

What do you say about a tiny restaurant with an intimate, French bistro setting, where the food is good--but a cup of coffee is $3?

Good coffee, but . . .

Yet that doesn’t keep the new Bernadette’s Restaurant from being the coziest room in Montecito.

And with its 25 seats, crisp tablecloths and flower bouquets, it’s probably one of the few “reservations only” places on this part of the coast.

Bernadette Millet, from France via the San Fernando Valley, has taken over this small space in a mini-shopping complex off Coast Village Road and is dishing out what she calls her own “gourmet” French cuisine.

Some of it doesn’t measure up, but much of it can be very, very good, albeit, very expensive. The Norwegian salmon tartare in aumoniere, for instance, which would catch my eye any time, turned out to be dull.

But a simpler-sounding dish, the crayfish bisque, has all the pungent-yet-subtle spicing you would expect, plus a good dose of crayfish.

A hot casserole appetizer of bay scallops with escargot is a good twin for the bisque, its garlic seasonings and chewy escargot complimenting the scallops.

For me, a dish like beef tournedos is almost always best left off a menu since it is almost always a dish lacking in distinction. Bernadette’s version isn’t worth making an exception to the rule, although you can order the tournedos with either the duck foie gras and a truffle-Madeira sauce, or sauteed in morel mushrooms.

But a veal chop, which here is large, tender and tasty in a sauce of morels and wild mushrooms, is very good. One of us ordered it “extra well-done” on one occasion--and even after this crime it was edible.

Bernadette’s dishes are beautifully presented, none more so than the flower of walleye, sitting in the midst of a pale tomato sauce, with a leek fondue. These “fish flowers” are done tenderly, and presented in a petal-like form.

If you’re hungrier, probably the most filling dish on the menu (the menu itself changes at least monthly) is a seafood risotto, which is close to being a seafood paella, with its large mussels in the shell and plenty of softly cooked salmon in herb seasonings.

There was general agreement that the star of the menu is the trout, stuffed with a salmon mousse and sitting in a distinctive, reduced sauce of vermouth, with flavors such as cilantro and shallots.

Bernadette’s desserts are what I’d refer to as mixed.

There was much applause over a chocolate meringue item, but I found the chocolate torte dry on two separate occasions. This chocoholic reluctantly opted for a raspberry crepe. It was worth it. Lots of ripe raspberries, good texture in the crepe itself, and just the right mixture of whipped cream oozing out of the whole thing.

I’m lucky I don’t drink coffee.

* WHERE AND WHEN

Bernadette’s Restaurant, 1155 Coast Village Road, Montecito. (805) 969-1456. Open for dinner from 6 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday. Reservations only, beer and wine, major credit cards accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $60-$88. Recommended dishes: crayfish bisque, $8; stuffed trout with salmon mousse, $22.