Yankee’s Accents Are Hearty : Tavern Refines Cape Cod Flavor

Yankee Tavern is known around Newport Beach as Hans Prager’s other restaurant. The Ritz, Prager’s better-known establishment, should feel flattered, because in many ways, this mock Cape Cod roadhouse is more appealing and easier to take than its more formal counterpart. It’s casual enough to walk into on the spur of the moment, but the food is hearty and delicious enough to make any meal come across as a special occasion.

Nothing much has changed in the four years the restaurant has been open, except perhaps a more swollen bar scene during Monday night football. The dining room is almost sedate by comparison, filled with men who look as if they’ve stepped directly from the boardroom at Paine Webber and women sporting tans acquired anywhere between here and Manzanillo. It’s a safe bet a number of these customers are in fact sea salts. A few I’ve talked to actually moor their yachts directly beyond the restaurant’s panoramic windows.

The nautical theme runs deep. A clipper ship mural sits majestically over the bar, and overhead fans twirl languidly below a rustic beamed ceiling. The dining room fairly gleams with brass, too: brass lanterns, brass candle holders, a brass railing, top shelf stock straight out of a ship’s chandlery. The walls are a light beige clapboard, and seating is on stiff-backed wooden captain’s chairs that are more functional than comfortable.

In spite of these somewhat Spartan appointments, parties tend to linger over meals here. That means there can be a wait during peak hours, despite the fact that this is one of the fastest kitchens around.

I like to come here for Sunday brunch, when the dining room is flooded with sun scattered through the skylight--and you don’t have to fight for your table. An abbreviated menu is available at that time, including a patrician roast beef hash that is perhaps the restaurant’s best dish. Chunks of soft seasoned prime beef are cut by just the faintest amount of potato, topped with a perfectly poached egg and sprinkled with chopped parsley. There are also puffy little blueberry pancakes, silver-dollar-sized and full of berries, which you can further emphasize with the sweet blueberry syrup served on the side.

The Maryland crab cakes typify this restaurant’s approach to cooking. These delicate, crusty little cakes are all flaky snow crab and buttery crust, but they bear little resemblance to the spicy, roughhouse crab cakes you’d actually find anywhere near Chesapeake Bay. Prager learned his craft in the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York, which goes a long way toward explaining why his dishes are so, well, refined.

At dinner, it’s best to start with the chewy, full-flavored littleneck clams, a one-pound serving steaming in a simple white wine broth. There are farmed Eastern mussels, too, in a fancier marinade consisting of shallots, garlic and cream.

You can also get excellent deep-fried calamari with the clean taste of fresh oil, or a crisp hearts of romaine salad blanketed with a rich dressing made from Wisconsin blue cheese. There are hearty soups, too, though none exactly like ones I remember from my boyhood in Massachusetts.

The Tavern’s clam chowder is shot though with the flavor of the chopped littlenecks that bob to the surface from time to time, but it’s too thick and stingy with the potatoes to pass for a genuine New England chowder. The mushroom barley soup with vegetables is wonderful, mostly mushrooms in an intensely mushroomy stock with just a touch of barley to bind it all together. Prager’s version of Maine lobster bisque, though, is disappointing. It’s salty and overly homogenized, and you taste sherry a lot more than you taste lobster.

Main courses are almost all tried-and-true favorites. Fish and chips here means flaky, squeaky-fresh Canadian halibut in crisp beer batter alongside good cole slaw and long, skinny fries. Douse it up with malt vinegar and the exemplary homemade tartar sauce.

Yankee pot roast and turkey meatloaf have both improved a lot since the restaurant’s early days. The pot roast consists of soft sliced beef in a rich brown sauce, and the meatloaf is a rugged sort of country pate served in an unctuous mushroom sauce. There’s a delicious chicken and mushroom pot pie stuffed with enormous chunks of chicken in a creamy veloute base. Great tender American lamb shanks come in a tomato-rich sauce atop homemade noodles.

If you want hearty, the pork chops are heavily breaded and terrific, thanks to an apple-jack country gravy with freshly mashed potatoes and red cabbage. And it is always Thanksgiving in Yankee territory. I could eat Yankee Tavern’s Shelton Farm turkey five times a week; ditto the wondrous pecan dressing and giblet gravy.

Yankee austerity doesn’t really sanction many of the sumptuous desserts on this list, such as deep-dish blueberry cobbler with a flaky pot pie crust, double-chocolate brownie drenched in chocolate sauce or (perish the thought) that very non-Yankee creme brulee.

But who cares? This is California, after all.

Yankee Tavern is moderate to expensive. Starter courses are $2.95 to $8.50. Main courses are $9.50 to $19.

* YANKEE TAVERN

* 333 Bayside Drive, Newport Beach.

* (714) 675-5333.

* Open for dinner daily, 5:30 p.m. to midnight; brunch Saturday and Sunday, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

* All major credit cards accepted.