Seeking the Old Hideaway

In October 1994, after 10 years as chef at L’Orangerie and a brief stint at Cicada in West Hollywood, Jean Franois Meteigner, who began cooking at 14 in France, finally got his own restaurant, La Cachette. He caught the bistro wave early, seducing diners with his velvety terrine de foie gras, sumptuous crab and lobster bisque, salmon in Cabernet sauce, roasted leg of lamb with flageolet beans and a consummate tarte tatin. The atmosphere was casual and fun; the cooking, polished and delicious. I had every expectation that it would evolve and mature into something truly exceptional.

But nearly three years ago, Meteigner and partner Liza Utter split up. She went on to open the Beach House in Santa Monica, and he has opened the more casual Bistro 829. Ever since, La Cachette has sorely lacked a strong front-of-the-house presence. Service varies from attentive to careless. Often the round tables in the main room are wedged so closely together that it’s difficult for waiters to do their job. More troubling is the erratic food. Even on a night when the kitchen is doing its best, much of La Cachette’s cooking lacks its old spark. Some of Meteigner’s best dishes no longer appear at all.

The Westside “hideaway” (la cachette in French), with its coffered ceiling and white-and-navy decor, is a handsome restaurant, especially at lunch, when natural light streams in the front windows. Flower arrangements in ornate urns add some color, but the art on the walls is just as awful as it is in many restaurants in France. If you sit on the banquette along one wall (where there are just inches between the tables), La Cachette could easily be a bistro in a bourgeois Paris neighborhood, except that no one here has a miniature poodle on his lap or a German shepherd snoozing under the table.

La Cachette’s menu touts Meteigner’s signature dishes with the kind of overwrought prose normally reserved for places like Jerry’s Famous Deli. The whitefish salad is introduced as “Los Angeles’ Best House-Smoked Whitefish with Baked Potato Salad.” There’s “La Cachette’s Famous Swordfish ‘Steak’ with Soy Wasabe Sauce.” And warm lobster salad is dressed in “Jean Francois’ Original White Truffle Oil Dressing.” Original? I regret to point out that a number of other chefs have had the same bad idea.

Fortunately, that crab and lobster bisque is still one of the best starters. Served with a long raft of toasted bread and plenty of rouille, the idea is to spread the garlic mayonnaise on the crouton and float it in the ruddy orange bisque, breaking it up with your spoon. Even better, swirl the rouille directly into the soup. A rustic marbled duck confit pate makes a good first course, too. And a thick Portobello mushroom, charred like a steak, appears with greens in a salad. But the lightly smoked whitefish draped over waxy yellow potatoes doesn’t taste as sparkling as I remember.

When Meteigner gets hold of a good piece of swordfish, his grilled swordfish “steak” with wasabi sauce packs some punch. The grilled New York steak with Roquefort and a tall heap of pommes frites is OK, though Black Angus is not the most flavorful beef, and the cooking is not always as precise as it should be. Rack of lamb, served with a crock of underdone flageolet beans, is tender, but so bland that it’s hard to identify it as lamb at all. That roasted leg of lamb I used to love is gone now. And the double-roasted duck served two ways is sometimes sloppily presented, the duck overcooked and tired, the sauce out of balance. Still, the braised red cabbage that comes with it is appealing. As a special, farm-raised venison, accompanied by a starchy puree of turnips and chestnuts, is a good choice. Cassoulet, however, doesn’t begin to do justice to the splendid peasant dish from the south of France. The sausage is rubbery, the duck confit is shredded and dry, and worst of all, the beans are undercooked. It’s a half-hearted effort.

Fatigue (or apathy) is reflected in the specials, which always seem to be the same every time I visit. There’s the inevitable carrot and ginger soup--no dairy, low fat--and the blue crab tartare (it’s steamed, so it’s really cooked, the waiter explains. I guess no one is supposed to wonder why the dish is still called tartare). It’s as if the chef has lost interest in cooking. Prices have climbed, too. If La Cachette is a bistro, it’s an expensive one, where you can easily spend $70 a person for food that’s mostly uninspired.

The wine list is very French in its sensibility: Generally overpriced and uninteresting. It would add to the dining experience here if the list reflected the wealth of interesting wines available from all corners of France, not just the inevitable Bordeaux and Burgundies. The enlightened corkage policy in effect when the restaurant opened (one fee for however many bottles) attracted wine lovers to La Cachette. Now there’s a $15-per-bottle corkage fee--and the restaurant restricts the number of bottles you can bring in to two per table.

When it comes to desserts, little is new. The waiters still push the chocolate souffle as if the world has never seen one before. And when you get it, it’s more like a dark chocolate cake with a molten center than a true souffle. All year round, the warm apricot tart paved with slivered almonds is offered. There’s an unremarkable apple tart on puff pastry. But where is Metigner’s luscious tarte tatin? Fortunately, the chef has just put it back on the menu.

La Cachette will do if you need a French fix. What’s so dispiriting is that Meteigner is capable of so much more.

LA CACHETTE

CUISINE: French. AMBIENCE: Pretty hideaway with slipcovered chairs and bourgeois French art. BEST DISHES: Whitefish salad, crab and lobster bisque, swordfish with wasabi, steak with Roquefort. WINE PICKS: 1997 Patz & Hall Chardonnay, Napa Valley; 1996 Iron Horse Pinot Noir, Sonoma. FACTS: 10506 Little Santa Monica Blvd., West Los Angeles; (310) 470-4992. Lunch weekdays; dinner nightly. Appetizers, $6 to $17; main courses, $16 to $26. Corkage $15; limit two bottles. Valet parking.