Back to Basics

Appearances can be deceiving.

With its blue-gray clapboard siding and teal protruding beams, Foxfire looks like many another business in its Anaheim Hills shopping mall, where the design is an odd fusion of Early California and New England fishing village.

What sets Foxfire apart--even more than the flames leaping from the Statue of Liberty-like torch on its roof--is its surprisingly large, private club-like interior.

During my first meal there, a Sunday brunch, my guests and I regretted that we hadn’t left a trail of bread crumbs to find our way back to the room where our recessed oak-lined booth with tie-back curtains was located . . . to say nothing of helping us find the buffet room for second and third helpings.

We did want those extra helpings. In addition to the usual brunch suspects--eggs, waffles, bacon and their like--this buffet spread featured mounds of boiled shrimp and a tray of oysters on the half shell (whose only fault was that they weren’t replenished quickly enough for some of us).

But even more appealing, because of the culinary talent that went into them, were two dishes you rarely see at brunch: a savory blanquette de veau--meltingly tender chunks of veal enhanced by a rich (but lightly creamed) sauce--and an equally successful homey French stew (boeuf en daube). The long-cooked, flavorsome cuts of beef were appropriately abetted by sliced carrots and celery that still retained their vegetal crispness.

The brunch tab was $16.96. But with the added options of pepper steak, maple-smoked ham, various pastas and desserts plus seemingly unlimited refills of sparkling wine, that was not distressing.

However, if you go to Foxfire expecting the imaginative Asian-influenced fusion cooking that dominated the menu when the restaurant was reviewed in these pages a little more than a year ago, you will be disappointed. Its self-proclaimed rubric is now “European Steakhouse.” In fact, meat does rule here. There are excellent steaks and baby rack of lamb and an especially tasty apple-smoked double-thick pork porterhouse.

Among the brief “La Mer” listings--why the menu has French headings I surely don’t know--Lobster Cardinale is a throw-back to earlier American menu days, stuffed, as it is, with shrimp and crab and doused in a Newburgh sauce. The one Asian gesture you’ll find now is a thick block of peppered ahi fillet cooked tataki-style: seared on the outside and very rare (and, of course, very cool) on the inside.

Desserts have included competent versions of a lemon tart (with raspberry puree) and an apple tart (with butterscotch sauce).

With a la carte entree prices hovering around $20--every side dish from al dente green beans with ham to steaming gratineed potatoes and crunchy shoestrings is extra--this is a special-event kind of place. However, the plushness of the prices and the setting doesn’t always extend to the rest of the experience.

When I made a reservation for 5 p.m., I was asked whether an hour and 45 minutes would be enough time for our meal; the table was booked after that. At the end of our meal, the waitress actually looked at her watch when we asked for the dessert list--a restaurant first (and, I hope, last) for me. For some reason, there was a bouquet of artificial flowers on our table when others in view sported fresh carnations.

Oddly, when it comes to pricing, the relatively low markup on wines at Foxfire makes up a bit for the high cost of the food. Often restaurants double the retail price of wines. Not here. A crisp Caymus Sauvignon Blanc at $28, a well-balanced Grgich Hills Chardonnay at $40 and a fruity Sanford Merlot at $34 were all priced well below that multiple.

And just how many rooms does Foxfire have? There are so many that I’m not sure that I’ve seen them all. There are several dining rooms with more than one table, one or two with just one large table, a patio and a bar room with a long, gleaming copper-topped bar and two pool tables--plus a large adjoining space with a bandstand, a dance floor and a banner announcing that Monday is karaoke night.

With its high prices and multipurpose spaces, Foxfire is clearly an event restaurant. What that event is is, of course, entirely up to you.

BE THERE

Foxfire, 5717 E. Santa Ana Canyon Road, Anaheim Hills (714) 974-5400. Lunch 11:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m. Monday-Friday; dinner 5-9 p.m. Sunday-Thursday and 5-10 p.m. Friday-Saturday; brunch 10 a.m.-2:30 p.m. All major cards.