Zazou Brings Back an Old New Wave

California Cuisine is alive in Redondo Beach. No kidding; California Cuisine in the old sense, when it took its inspiration mostly from Provence and stood for exuberance, invention and a bit of mischief. It’s as if 1990 never happened to our economy.

Zazou Cuisine of the Sun is the name of the place, and it’s definitely a beachy room, with its sponged walls, distressed floor and generally sun-blasted, sand-ground, just about stone-washed look. It’s not in the beachiest part of Redondo, though, but the tail end of Catalina Avenue, approximately one shout from Palos Verdes Estates.

But you want to know about the mischief. One of the best appetizers is the Provencale tomato tarte. This is no tart, not even a pizza--it’s a crisp wafer topped with half a dozen peeled, roasted Roma tomatoes. Really, it’s a shameless excuse to eat sweet, fresh roasted tomatoes.

The hand-chopped ahi tartare Nicoise is not just a salad, it’s a show. The truncated cone of chopped raw tuna is surrounded by piles of diced cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, mushrooms and pears (Zazou is big on diced pears). The waiter will offer to toss it together into a faintly sweet, multicolored chopped salad. I’m betting nobody serves anything like this in Nice.

And so the appetizers go. An eggplant gratin that’s more like an eggplant Parmesan enlivened with sweet peppers, basil oil and lots of goat cheese. Blue crab and crayfish cakes, very light and flavorful, with a demented “mango gazpacho” that would better suit a simpler dish (say, grilled shrimp). Oven-roasted leeks with melted Roquefort and slightly chewy pear chunks. A plate of melted Brie with a roasted head of garlic and some toasted pecans and bits of apple, which are a little hard to locate.

“Lamb ossobuco” is certainly a California sort of name, but the entree is really just a lamb shank, meaty, rather than gamy, with alarming, carrot-tinted mashed potatoes and about eight bright-green fava beans.

You see the word “Tuscan” on the menu and suddenly it seems we’re back in 1998. But the Tuscan veal, chicken and vegetable meatloaf isn’t quite anything you’d see in one of our Italian restaurants. It tastes a little like Italian sweet sausage, only the texture is lighter and looser, and you don’t find Chinese broccoli accompanying many Tuscan dishes.

“Brick chicken” is more nearly Italian. It’s basically pollo al mattone, flattened and grilled with a weight on it, but it comes with leeks, garlic and a rather Provencal olive sauce with a bit of orange peel flavor.

The grilled ahi with air-roasted tomatoes is an architectural construction. A sort of mug of molded couscous is filled with the same sweet roasted tomatoes we’ve met on the tomato tarte, topped with seared ahi. The plate is landscaped with eggplant caponata.

There are several pasta dishes, including pappardelle with duck. The idea of wide noodles with stewed duck, sweet peppers and peas is certainly Italian enough, but there’s a spiciness about the duck that isn’t. And the butternut squash and ginger ravioloni are unique: very delicate, in a sweetish sauce with an occasional cheesy tang.

Lunch runs to salads and pastas, and naturally it includes a messy super-premium hamburger on a six-grain bun. One of the toppings you can choose for it is onions fried quite brown and spiked with a little balsamic vinegar, which makes a hamburger taste rather grown-up. The burger comes with about a quart of skinny fries. Speaking of grown-up, one of the few items to appear on both the lunch and dinner menus is center-cut filet mignon, very tender, with a loud Merlot-Gorgonzola sauce.

The desserts incline to the overpowering. A caramel espresso cheesecake with a little funky touch of mascarpone; a rich clafouti that’s more like a low-rise custard with berries and Kirsch in it; a French apple tart with a dense filling of apples cooked dark, as if for tarte Tatin; a chocolate blowout called chocolate Monaco, which seems to be mostly cream and chocolate.

The most dangerous is the brioche bread pudding. It’s more like a soft custard with a little brioche thrown in for texture and lots of caramel sauce. Big mischief.

BE THERE

Zazou Cuisine of the Sun, 1810 S. Catalina Ave., Redondo Beach; (310) 540-4884; fax: (310) 540-5754. Full bar. Street parking; also parking lots around corner on Elena Street. American Express, MasterCard and Visa. Lunch 11:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m. Monday-Friday; dinner 5:30-10 p.m. daily. Dinner for two, food only, $37-$72.

What to Get: Provencale tomato tarte, ahi tartare Nicoise, eggplant tomato gratin, grilled ahi, veal and chicken meatloaf, apple tarte Normande, brioche bread pudding.