Confidence Adds Spice to the Basics

Marriages are made in heaven (sometimes), so why not restaurants?

Newport Beach native Lisa Blender met Laurent Ferre while working at La Cremailliere in Orleans, France, and recently they wed. During the past winter, they became the proud parents of a restaurant called the Pleasant Peasant, which they bought from Lisa’s dad.

The Pleasant Peasant in Newport (now dissociated from its cousin in Downey) has always been a place for low-priced French cooking, but never so good as it is today. Chef Ferre did a five-year stint in the kitchen of Alain Chapel, a three-star Michelin restaurant outside Lyons, and the man is far more talented than this menu lets on.

The restaurant’s menu is basic in the extreme, actually, running to pate, escargots, a few pastas and some simple entrees such as sand dabs amandine and lamb loin Dijonnaise. But Ferre cooks these antiquities with a deft confidence and plans to work in more sophisticated recipes gradually--things he learned at Alain Chapel, for example.

Not that Ferre plans to get radical. He wants his restaurant to be a bistro, not a temple of gastronomy, and so far he’s been right on target. I’m not sure I’d call this “French country cooking,” as the menu proclaims, but there is a rustic quality to such dishes as onion soup gratinee and lamb shank Alain Chapel, two of the best versions of these dishes I’ve ever tasted. Let’s just call it good cooking.

Anyone who remembers the Pleasant Peasant in its previous incarnation should look forward to more than just a revamped kitchen. The brown, schoolmarmish wallpaper that once characterized the restaurant has been covered over with cream-colored pine. The tables are covered with classy blue-and-white nappes , imported French tablecloths worthy of the most elegant room. The waitresses are clad in blue and white, too--prim, frilly uniforms that would suit handmaidens in a French period piece.

After you’re seated, a waitress plies you with fresh rolls and a lightly whipped chicken liver mousse which is not like anything you’ll find in France. In fact, it’s the consistency of the aerated whipped butter you get at International House of Pancakes. It’s probably better to pass on the mousse and wait for the appetizers.

Ferre’s mesquite-smoked salmon, for instance. This gorgeously buttery fish is so delicately smoked it’s really an elegant sashimi. There’s just the narrowest bite of mesquite in this fish, and Ferre’s side salad of cold, marinated green beans makes a sparkling complement.

His classic take on onion soup has a different sort of sparkle. It’s served up in an amphora-shaped crock, tastes good enough to put the onion soup at most pricier restaurants to shame--and it’s only $3. This is an intense broth (not overpowered by salt, for once) where the natural sweetness of the onions is balanced perfectly by an intelligent amount of Gruyere cheese.

Ferre’s shrimp cocktail California is downright smoke and mirrors, but the kind of deception I understand. It’s not a shrimp cocktail at all, but a mound of bay shrimps in an egg-rich homemade mayonnaise, with fresh tarragon and little bits of avocado tucked into the mixture adding color, dimension and taste.

If this were France, no self-respecting cuisinier would have a pasta section on the menu, but who said this was France? Pasta maraichere probably has the widest appeal: a choice of pasta (fresh fusilli or linguine) in a rich brown sauce, with an interesting mix of green beans, red pepper, carrot and asparagus swirled in. The crab and vegetable ravioli, however, are undoubtedly the best--flat, moon-shaped pillows cooked al dente, filled with a brunoise of vegetables and snow crab meat drizzled with a light, lobster-flavored sauce Americaine . Both taste impeccably French. A man has his pride, you know.

Ferre doesn’t get nearly so fancy with the entrees, though, which tend to be big farmer’s plates preceded by a starter course of soup or salad. (Choose a soup like the pumpkin orange carrot potage, or the onion, rather than the humdrum house salad.) Lamb shank Alain Chapel, which pays homage to Ferre’s former mentor, is easily the best thing on this good menu. It’s basically a daube, a dish of meat braised in a rich, tomato-based stock flavored with white wine and spotted with carrot and potato. The meat practically falls apart upon eye contact.

Sand dabs amandine and breast of duck are further examples of this young chef’s talent with simple preparations. He cooks the sand dabs just the way you or I would, with lemon butter, and the result is as smooth as velvet. The duck breast, cooked medium rare, is served with a tart blackberry sauce.

I’m less impressed by some other dishes. Wellington is meat loaf in puff pastry with sauce Bordelaise--less of a waste than the original (where two of the best things in the world to eat, goose liver and filet mignon, cancel each other out), but still ponderously heavy.

Filet of pork is a miss-the-mark attempt at pork Basquaise, where the meat is sauteed with peppers, tomatoes plus a puzzling addition of soy sauce.

Desserts exhibit the same solid, if unimaginative, quality as everything else here. Ferre doesn’t often make his strawberry genoise (almost like a shortcake), but when he does, it’s no small wonder. Beyond that, there is a slightly airy but tasty chocolate mousse, a classic apple tart in puff pastry and a first-class creme brulee. These are just the kind of mom-and-pop desserts that make any bistro worth its salt.

But we can’t call this a mom-and-pop restaurant quite yet. These people are newlyweds, remember.

The Pleasant Peasant is moderately priced. Appetizers are $3 to $6.50. Pastas are $8.50 to $11. Entrees are $8.75 to $17.75.

* THE PLEASANT PEASANT

* 4251 Martingale Way, Newport Beach.

* (714) 955-2755.

* Open for lunch Monday through Friday 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m.; for dinner Monday through Thursday 5:30 to 9 p.m., Friday and Saturday till 10 p.m. Closed Sunday.

* American Express, MasterCard and Visa.