RESTAURANT REVIEW : Voulez-Vous? Maybe . . . Maybe Not

Two old friends of my parents, retired schoolteachers and serious Francophiles, told me about Bistro Voulez-Vous in Old Town Pasadena. “It’s a small, unpretentious restaurant a lot like the neighborhood places we visited throughout France,” they said.

Voulez-Vous means “Do you want to?” in French, and do I? I just don’t know. I’ve visited the place several times now and it’s been a bumpy ride. I’ve had pleasant meals, acceptable meals, quite bad meals.

One morning I stopped in for breakfast. We were led out on an airy, glassed-in patio overlooking the pedestrian walkway, Mercantile Place. Nice, but my spinach omelet was unforgivably tough, the blueberry muffin an enormous, mealy, gray-brown thing . A pumpkin muffin was only marginally better. Our waitress forgot to bring us water, milk for our tea, even cutlery.

“Breakfast,” I reported to my parents’ friends, “was a mistake.” They urged me to try dinner.

In the blue evening, the patio was pretty, the place felt more pulled together. The dinner crowd looked as if they might have just stepped off the bus during an educational tour of Provence: adults, a few quiet dates eschewing Old Town’s trendier and more crowded restaurants. There was no high fashion and not a stitch of grunge wear in sight.

The waiter-maitre d’ was high-spirited and helpful, the food solidly good. (I must say the potato leek soup, though hearty, had an odd sour edge.) The salads were fresh and judiciously dressed. Crunchy, citrus-marinated salmon topped greens mixed with fresh orange and lemon sections. A flavorful tenderloin steak sat on a bed of rich mashed potatoes flecked with “onion marmalade.” I was crazy for the beautifully grilled salmon. Moroccan-born, Cordon Bleu-trained chef Samuel Reda serves merguez sausage, a Moroccan specialty, with gnocchi. The creme brulee was basic and perfect: glassy burnt sugar top, rich smooth custard, toasted marshmallow flavor.

Surely, I thought, this restaurant should be doing far better than it is. This is inarguably good, moderately priced food. But the next time I ate at Bistro Voulez-Vous, I ate my words. It was like encountering the mean alter ego of that pleasant, cozy bistro. The first thing we saw was the frantically busy chef having a public disagreement with the waiter-maitre d’ over an order of angel hair pasta.

Although there were plenty of empty tables, we waited 15 minutes to be seated--and found ourselves back in the hands of our breakfast waitress. She was slow getting to us and then forgot to put in our order. “Your food will be right out,” she said, incorrectly. Then came a continuous litany of apology--”I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry.” The couple at the next table had finished their salad and entree by the time we received our first course.

My “Prairie” salad (mixed greens with Gorgonzola and apple) was half the size of my neighbor’s. My friend’s lamb chops were tough, insipid, watery. My half-chicken with Boursin cheese was a half consisting of two thighs and two drumsticks. I’d asked for some white meat. The waitress first said I had some, then confessed that this was all the chicken the chef had left. Again, she was sorry, so sorry, very sorry. I could have a free dessert. The chicken was overcooked, ghastly.

As it happened, nobody ever came to ask us if we wanted dessert. We waited 20 minutes after our plates had been cleared and then began to beg for our bill, which took another 10 minutes. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” intoned the waitress. “But please, don’t give up on us.”

Voulez-Vous seemed such a cluster of contradictions that curiosity drew me back one more time: I went for lunch, which was fine. The “Prairie” salad was returned to its generous proportions: whole sticks of Gorgonzola on a mountain of greens. A salmon en croute in a pink sauce was delicious, as was a small filet of John Dory in the lightest, most amiable Roquefort sauce. Only the creme brulee was off--hot and curdled.

So I’m left with a question. Do I want to go back to Voulez-Vous? Maybe someday, if the lines at Il Fornaio and Sorriso are just too long. Then again, maybe not.

* Bistro Voulez-Vous, 17 S. Raymond St., Pasadena, (818) 449-5884. Lunch Monday through Friday, dinner Tuesday through Sunday, brunch Saturday and Sunday. Wine and beer. All major credit cards accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $26-$48.