RESTAURANT REVIEW : La Serre Alumni Bring Expertise to Villas Garden

The salsa music came on just after 10, as we were finishing our souffles.

We were actually on the last sips of our coffee, having endured an interminable tape of Tom Jones hits. Two of my friends breathed sighs of relief, a third made air castanets a la Carmen Miranda. If we had been in the mood for torch singing, we might have had a perfect evening.

Music aside, there is much to recommend about Villas Garden, a French-inspired restaurant located on Canoga Park’s far west side. Most of the kitchen staff, including chef Manuel (Nicho) Cabrera, are graduates of Studio City’s famed La Serre. (When that restaurant’s longtime chef, Jean Pierre Peiny, left to pursue other opportunities, so did most of his crew.) Maitre d’ Eduardo Sanchez, another La Serre alumnus, aims to please, hampered slightly by a team of waiters who’d rather chat among themselves than with you. But it is Cabrera who provides most of this restaurant’s gusto.

Cabrera cooked at La Serre for nearly 13 years and has a deft, classical style. A good deal of his menu is traditional French, with sneaky touches of California and regional America thrown in to enliven the proceedings. Cabrera is also a master of desserts. His light, frothy souffles--especially the chocolate and the Grand Marnier--are the best I’ve tasted in years.

The surroundings are far from charmless, despite the generic shopping-mall motif. The dining area is mall boxy, but the cream-colored walls and lush tropical plants distract the eye. The best tables are secluded along the perimeter of a wooden divider, with the remainder, mostly half-moon-shaped booths of coffee-colored vinyl, running along the wall facing the parking lot. Tables are dressed nattily for the evening with white and crimson cloths that look quite fashionable in the soft light.

You’ve seen many of these appetizers before, but two of them, Cajun popcorn and escargots de Bourgogne, are devastatingly good. The popcorn is shrimp, frizzled with batter, in a cayenne-pepper-garlic butter sauce. The chef spoons a generous number of them onto a makeshift radicchio basket, then serves them with a perfectly unctuous remoulade for dipping. Even though La Serre is behind him, Cabrera employs a vestigial touch of class in the form of a meticulously cloth-wrapped lemon for squeezing.

The escargots are even better. They’d be sheer perfection without the tacky plastic shells. There are six tender, tasty snails swimming in a green herb-garlic sauce that you’ll be trying to coax out of the shells by any means. I eventually found myself banging them on the plate to get the remaining drops of sauce. The sauce is that good.

None of the other starters can compete. Stracciatella, an Italian egg-drop soup with spinach, is inedibly salty. The shrimp sauteed in garlic, parsley, cognac and Madeira are saved by the good sauce; the shrimp themselves are tired and mushy. The Caesar salad is strangely lacking in punch. Neither egg yolk nor anchovy figure in the sauce, and the salad is covered by a heap of dry Parmesan. And pizza Educcini, named for a Bolivian restaurant once managed by Sanchez, has too much anchovy and sauteed onion, making it excessively oily and pungent.

You can have a pasta for a main course here, but you’ll be taking the worst of this menu if you do. The pastas are sadly overcooked. Linguine with avocado, basil and cream is a good idea if you don’t mind uncommon richness. That California/Italian standby known as angel hair (with fresh tomato, garlic, basil, et al.) is pretty flavorless.

The entrees, however, are all well-crafted. The simplest roast chicken with garlic and fresh herbs, is the most pleasing. This is bistro cooking at its best, a crisp half chicken studded with cloves of roasted garlic. Salmon comes grilled in a lemony herb sauce, lamb chops are grilled a la Provencale with basil, parsley and garlic. Cabrera’s Latin roots come to the surface with his veal Milanesa, a lemony, densely breaded version of Wienerschnitzel sprinkled liberally with zesty capers.

I’ve recommended the souffles, but they aren’t the only masterful desserts here. Cabrera’s chocolate mousse, served in a parfait glass with fresh berries, is rich and addictive. There must be the equivalent of two egg yolks in every portion. Don’t snub his textbook raspberry tart, plated with a masterful creme anglaise, or dense creme brulee, either. Only creme caramel, the humble flan, tastes as if it has been prepared with indifference. Maybe next time we’ll ask for more salsa.

Suggested dishes: escargots de Bourgogne, $8; Cajun popcorn, $7.50; roast chicken, $14.50; lamb chop Provencale, $16.50; souffles, $6.50.

Villas Garden, 22323 Sherman Way, Canoga Park (818) 702-9813. Lunch 11:30 a.m.-3 p.m. Monday-Friday; dinner 5-11 p.m. nightly. Full bar. Parking lot. All major cards. Dinner for two, food only, $40-$60.