Lucques is No Fluke

Take one old brick building with an impressive Hollywood provenance (silent screen star Harold Lloyd’s former carriage house). Add L.A. designer-of-the-moment Barbara Barry and fledgling restaurant owners Suzanne Goin, former executive chef at Campanile, and Caroline Styne, who ran Jones Hollywood and resurrected the hipster hangout after a fire. Stir them all together with an interesting crowd drawn from the worlds of design, music, film and television. What you get is Lucques--pronounced “Luke,” named for a variety of French olive and one of the most appealing restaurants to debut in recent months.

The ramshackle brick and timber structure on Melrose Avenue has been transformed into a clubby French-Mediterranean restaurant. Barry’s decor gives Lucques the understated elegance of a fine Italian suit. The cut is good and the textures are opulent, yet there’s nothing fussy or pretentious. Her taupe, gray-green and white palette and the discreetly beautiful lighting create a sense of well-being. Half-moon booths are lined up along one wall. Two leather corner sofas are pulled up to a fireplace. Large, luminous Japanese-style box lights hover in the darkness. And the back opens through tall French doors onto a handsome patio bounded by high walls beneath an indigo sky.

Everything on the table reflects a similar aesthetic. The blond baskets that hold the bread--La Brea Bakery, of course--are actually bannetons, the reed baskets in which French bakers leave dough to rise. With the bread comes a plate holding a large slice of good sweet butter and a mound of fleur de sel, a fluffy, grayish sea salt from Camargue. The flatware has heft and balance; the plates are simple and beautiful. Even the wineglasses are good ones, which is not always the case.

The low-key design sets the stage for Goin’s cooking. Just 32, she has worked at Al Forno in Providence, R.I., with the Roux brothers in London, at Chez Panisse in Berkeley and with Alain Passard at the three-star Arpege in Paris before landing the job at Campanile. She has an instinctive feel for the food of the Mediterranean. Her flavors are bold; her cooking, unabashedly sensual. Much of what she uses comes from farmers markets. And she likes to use unusual ingredients such as salt cod, oxtails and rabbit. (Her brandade tart served with hard-boiled egg and set on a rich, buttery crust, tastes strongly of the Mediterranean’s beloved salt cod. Sicilian rabbit is wrapped in pancetta, stuffed with greens, pine nuts and currants, and set on a bed of barley cooked al dente and moistened with sherry.)

When tomatoes are at their height, she might offer a salad of cherry tomatoes, roughly torn croutons, slivered red onion and burrata, a fresh mozzarella with a heart of cream. Now that persimmons are in season, she’s put a lovely salad of persimmons, arugula and duck prosciutto scattered with shavings of Parmigiano-Reggiano on the menu. She’s also serving a medley of roasted beets with their greens, the marvelous crunch of walnuts and warm cabecou, a French goat cheese, set on chestnut leaves.

Summer’s appetizer of mascarpone polenta is now a hearty main course, rustic cornmeal mush swirled with the seductive Italian cheese and topped with a wild mushroom ragout of ochre-flapped chanterelles, roasted shallots and wilted bitter greens. There’s a marigold-colored soup made with giant Moroccan squash from the Santa Monica Farmers’ Market, garnished with spice-encrusted pumpkin seeds. I’m less fond of the blue crab salad laced with julienned celery root and apple in a creamy dressing. And what’s that underripe avocado doing on the plate? Her “raclette” seems more like potato nachos than the hearty cheese and potato dish from the French Alps. Here, the cheese is merely a grace note, melted over the Yukon potatoes, which are doused in a mustardy vinaigrette and tossed with sharp vinegary shallots and wilted greens.

Goin’s summer menu was so beguiling that I couldn’t help but think winter’s would be even better. It’s actually somewhat disappointing. There are only two holdovers: the “devil’s chicken,” slathered in mustard and bread crumbs and baked in a deep porcelain dish, and the club steak (basically a rib eye) for two grilled on the bone and served in thick, juicy slices. Sometimes you can still find her terrific bluefish as a special. It’s a flavorful, oily East Coast fish set off with a garlicky, absolutely authentic aioli. Other enticing specials include small Manila clams in a spicy broth redolent of garlic and spicy chorizo, and steelhead salmon wrapped in pancetta, grilled and served in a silky red wine butter. Both are worth ordering.

Though there’s a nice roasted leg of lamb with eggplant and peppers, the main courses are less interesting this time around. I like the sizable brine-cured pork chop in a sweet apple-sage butter. But better than the grilled quail is its couscous and meltingly soft date stuffing. Other dishes seem as if they’ve been created by committee instead of by one strong sensibility. I’m thinking of the braised oxtails, a mishmash of boned, shredded oxtail and baby root vegetables swimming in broth with squiggly spaetzle, a dish that doesn’t show any of the elements to best advantage.

When the restaurant is very busy, the kitchen is not as consistent as it is on slower nights. Lucques’ kitchen is young, after all, one that needs time to grow into a cohesive team. On the other hand, while service is always very correct, Lucques is anything but a stiff restaurant. It’s an entirely comfortable place, without a whiff of the attitude that makes going to trendy restaurants such an ordeal. Much of this is due to Styne’s easygoing style: She greets you warmly at the door and stops by to chat at your table.

Dessert is something to look forward to here. (Not for nothing did Goin work with Nancy Silverton at Campanile.) I love the vanilla pot de creme, a dreamy vanilla-scented custard served in a teacup with a couple of warm, sugar-dusted butter cookies, and the fall fruits steeped in red wine and served with a dense, spice-laden gingerbread. The lemon tart is puckery and good. And pear sorbet really tastes like pear. I’m hoping Goin will bring back the individual pecan tart and the custardy chocolate bread pudding from summer’s menu. One balmy night on the patio, we stretch out the dessert course with a half-bottle of Alois Kracher’s 1995 trockenbeerenauslese No. 6, made from the scheurebe grape; $65 may sound high, but anybody who knows this extraordinary Austrian sweet wine knows Lucques is practically giving it away at that price.

Lucques’ wine list is a work in progress, with a number of smart choices. The Champagnes come from smaller houses. And the California selections are not the usual suspects. You can also taste a couple of the Austrian whites currently making such a stir in the wine world. While the only Bordeaux is a blanc from Entre-Deux-Mers, the French entries are wide-ranging, with wines from Bandol, the Rhone, Burgundy and the Loire Valley. Italian wines are perhaps underrepresented. Still, it’s quite an eclectic wine list for a fledgling restaurant.

Did I mention the bar menu? I know that if I do, it will be harder than ever to find a seat there because L.A. doesn’t have many spots where you can eat this well after 10:30, or even 10. I love the olives (Lucques, of course) and almonds in warmed olive oil. One night there is a magical tomato tart on a feather-light crust. The steak frites bearnaise is first-rate, too, a chewy, flavorful cut with fabulous fries and a superlative bearnaise sauce on the side. And to finish off your bottle of wine, you can order the cheese plate. Right now, it consists of a Reblochon, a Langres and a Corsu Vecchiu, all perfect.

Lucques, growing pains and all, shows tremendous promise, more than any other restaurant to open in the past year. Goin and Styne are a formidable team, one that brings something increasingly rare to the table: fresh ideas and a warm personal style. Welcome, as they say, to L.A.

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LUQUES

CUISINE: French-Mediterranean. AMBIENCE: Serenely sophisticated restaurant with small bar, fireside sofas and patio. BEST DISHES: Roasted beet salad, cured pork chop, grilled quail with couscous stuffing, vanilla pot de creme, fall fruits in red wine. WINE PICKS: Alfred Gratien non-vintage brut, Champagne; 1996 Tement Sauvignon Blanc, Austria; 1996 Domaine Camus-Bruchon Savigny-Les-Beaune “Les Narbantons,” Burgundy. FACTS: 8474 Melrose Ave., West Hollywood; (323) 655-6277. Dinner only Tuesday through Sunday. Appetizers, $7 to $12; main courses, $18 to $25. Three-course Sunday night prix fixe dinner, $28. Valet parking.