RESTAURANTS : Duck, Duck, <i> Creme--</i> Give an Old Menu a Goosing

The 19th-Century French gourmet Brillat-Savarin revered a good roast. “One can learn to be a saucier ,” he wrote. “One must be born a rotisseur .”

Brillat-Savarin wouldn’t starve in today’s Orange County, but he’d look far and wide for a great roast chicken or standing rib roast in our French restaurants. Virtually all of them rely on the art of sauce-making to dazzle us, and that includes the new Pierre’s in Dana Point Harbor. All but one of Pierre’s entrees is broiled or sauteed, then crowned with a rich sauce.

There’s one roasted item, however: Long Island duck. I tried it and was pleasantly surprised when it turned out to be Pierre’s best dish.

It’s obvious that chef Pierre Tamas has ability. His menu lineup is one a seasoned O.C. restaurant-goer has seen a good deal of in other restaurants. The appetizer list is filled with such standards as onion soup, escargot and smoked salmon. The entrees, to use a Dorothy Parker line, run the gamut from A to B--veal, duck, beef in a half dozen different sauces, broiled fish.

Tamas is of French parentage, but his life has been one unlikely odyssey: Romanian by birth, raised in Buenos Aires, in the restaurant business in Orange County. You might remember the Pierre’s he once ran in Capistrano Beach.

Now, with his American-born wife, Karen, who runs the front of the house and offers diners a genuinely charming welcome, he’s ensconced in a lovely new location in Dana Point. The dining room is mostly pink with a beveled glass door, pastel banquettes and soft, intimate lighting. In warm weather, you might prefer to eat out on the elegant little patio you cross on the way to the dining room.

Tamas has made every effort to give his restaurant a French feeling. He’s hung gilt-framed paintings above every table, gallery-style, and placed a spray of fresh orchids by the front desk. The ladies’ room is indicated by a red lipstick symbol on the door, the men’s room by a mustache. The music is usually Piaf or the romantic wheeze of a French accordion. A couple of the waiters sound as if they’re auditioning to do voice-overs for Pepe Le Pew.

I just wish the food were more distinctly French. The chef usually has a tasty rustic pork liver pate on hand, but if he’s out, you’re forced back to the menu’s pseudo-French appetizers, such as oysters Rockefeller or mushrooms stuffed with crab meat. The mushrooms, wonderfully rich with Mornay sauce, are a recipe you wouldn’t be surprised to spot in a Jaycee cookbook.

You could order the onion soup, but I wouldn’t. It’s properly covered with melted Gruyere but on the watery side, and the taste of beef and onion doesn’t come through very well. The white wine and green onion sauce on the oysters Bourguignon (served out of the shell) is excessively lemony.

The escargot are a workmanlike version. Flavored with butter, white wine and garlic, they appear bubbling in a six-holed ceramic dish with a snuffbox full of chopped parsley on the side. Oddly, the waiter brought us two pieces of cold, stale cheese bread, instead of the usual (and more suitable) French bread, to mop up the garlicky sauce. Now, after a nondescript plate of greens, you’ll really be ready to hit the sauce--excuse me, sauces .

The words “ le steak au poivre vert and les grillades de boeuf Diane” are printed in big letters at the bottom of the entree page, so I take them to be the house specials. I’d prefer the chef’s tournedos Rossini, two petit filets sauteed in butter and topped with, according to the menu, foie de canard (duck liver). I’d swear the chef used that homemade pork liver instead of duck liver on my filets, but no matter. This is tender, buttery meat, and I’d come back to eat more.

Scampi are prepared a la Provencale in garlic butter, tomato and white wine, and served, quite correctly, with rice. One evening, the chef offered a buttery Dover sole with the unexpected pleasure of a ribbon of roe running down the side. Another surprise was an off-menu osso buco , two tasty, albeit marrowless, veal shanks baked in a huge casserole dish with an Italianate tomato-based sauce.

And that brings us to the duck. The menu calls the dish duck Montmorency, further describing it as a Bing cherry sauce. In this country, French restaurants prepare duck almost automatically a l’orange or with some other sweet sauce. I prefer my duck with turnips or a salty flavoring like olives, the way it would be served in a French farmhouse. Tamas uses sauce picholines (green olives, Cognac and cream) on chicken, and the kitchen was quite willing to substitute that for the cherry sauce on my duck. The combination works like a charm.

For those with a sweet tooth, Tamas makes peach Melba, a classic French dessert too often ignored today. It’s a fabulous version: good vanilla ice cream, fresh whipped cream, slices of fresh peach and a fine raspberry sauce, served in a wine glass. The Pierre brulee is also a winner, a hybrid of two well-known desserts, creme brulee and the Napoleon. The eggy burnt custard goes inside layers of puff pastry, and the whole thing is topped with caramel sauce.

Aha. The man can be inventive.

One invention I don’t approve of is the restaurant’s $15 corkage fee--$15!--especially when I was informed at the door that it would be $10. Pierre’s is expensive. Hors d’oeuvres are $4.50 to $7.75. Entrees are $15.55 to $18.95. Desserts are $6.

* PIERRE’S

* 34471 Street of the Golden Lantern, Dana Point.

* (714) 443-0877.

* Dinner 5:30 to 10 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday; brunch 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday.

* All major cards.