To Every Tasty Thing, There Is a Season

Across the street stands El Coyote, known for margaritas that make your blood scream. Next door was Lumpy Gravy, which was known (until it closed) for multiple screens of weird videos and having a shark suspended from its ceiling. This stretch of Beverly Boulevard might be a sort of restaurant row, but nobody calls it a gourmet ghetto.

On the other hand, here’s Solstice, in the former Mexica location, bravely cooking an ambitious seasonal menu, flinging around foie gras, duck breast and goat cheese. It’s chef Hugo Veltman’s first restaurant of his own, and he’s working like crazy. Maybe he gets help on busy nights, but I’ve never seen more than one person in the kitchen.

Here’s the kind of thing that’s being served now. A savory mushroom and goat cheese “torte”--stewed mushrooms and melted cheese served in a wedge, like pie, with a “crust” of sliced potatoes. Not only is it constructed like a dessert, the sauce of sweet cream, chives and chopped tomatoes mimics the creme anglaise that surrounds every other California Cuisine dessert. Another appetizer is ravioli with an utterly beefy oxtail filling, served in a bit of meat glaze with a crunchy topping of toasted bread crumbs.

Pleasant, Streamlined Bouillabaisse on Menu

There’s supposed to be foie gras in that last one, but it’s harder to detect there than it was in the appetizer of asparagus with seared foie gras and hazelnuts that was on the summer menu. Yes, the menu changes four times a year, which does give you seasonality and all that, but also means it’ll be months before, say, seared scallops with a tart confit of lemon zest are available again. These days, scallops are garnished with candied ginger (and a cucumber salad I don’t entirely see the point of).

Veltman follows the blue cheese, rather than the Parmesan, school of Caesar salad-making, and at the moment he includes fried oysters. Whatever the season, he makes a pleasant streamlined bouillabaisse called crayfish and mussel soup. I’m not so convinced by his curried pumpkin soup; pleasant but samey. Among the entrees, he offers a delightful filet mignon surrounded by potato puffs, and a really brilliant roasted salmon. The beautifully cooked salmon comes with fried slices of baby potato and a white wine sauce with a roguish dash of horseradish. The potatoes themselves seem infused with horseradish.

Duck breast is sliced up and served in a fan in the usual way, but it comes with an unusual tangy caramel sauce (another eye-opener) and braised white cabbage. Shrimp come on a Parmesan risotto with a sauce described as a lobster-infused tomato stew. NB: It also has a distinct dash of red pepper.

This season’s halibut has an herb topping that looks like a sports announcer’s toupee and has an unexpected anise flavor. Back during the summer, there was a square of halibut with a basil and spinach crust, looking like one of those flat-roofed L.A. bungalows from the ‘50s.

This chef believes in serving pork loin pink in the middle--scary if you’ve been raised on the fear of trichinosis, but actually quite safe, and it happens to be the only way to keep pork loin from coming out dry. I have to say that one dish is excessively dry here, the polenta-sprinkled chicken breast. It is accompanied by a tasty saute of chopped baby artichokes (the whole artichokes, not just the hearts).

Season in and season out, the dessert list always seems to include a napoleon made with chocolate-coated filo, as crunchy as corn chips, accompanied by oddly suitable honey ice cream. At this time of year, you can also get a more conventional raspberry napoleon made with regular filo. Or you could choose a sweet-sour lemon creme bru^lee topped with a knot of candied lemon zest, or an apple charlotte surrounded by quite tart raspberry puree.

There are a few small flaws here. Some dishes aren’t as handsome as they might be, probably because of the understaffed kitchen. But amazingly, Veltman contrives to get all a table’s order done at the same time, which doesn’t always happen in more, let’s say, heavily staffed establishments. This place is really a find here on the Margaritaville Block.

Late news: Chef Hugo Veltman’s father, Martinus J.G. Veltman, won the Nobel Prize for physics last week, so the chef has added a punning physics menu. It sounds pretty good, particularly the coffee and chocolate muons (tiny truffles named for a subatomic particle that disintegrates in two-millionths of a second).

BE THERE

Solstice, 7313 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles. (323) 525-0405. Dinner 5:30-11 p.m. Sunday and Tuesday-Thursday, 5-11:30 p.m. Friday-Saturday; brunch 10:30 a.m.-3 p.m. Sunday; closed Mondays. Beer and wine. Valet parking Friday-Saturday; rear parking lot (off Poinsettia) other nights. All major cards. Dinner for two, $46 to $64.

What to Get: mushroom and goat cheese torte, oxtail ravioli, roasted salmon, filet mignon, lemon creme bru^lee, raspberry napoleon.