Bright Outlook at Tournesol

Asunflower graces the cover of the menu. The quilted Provencal print placemats on the sidewalk patio are a deep egg-yolk gold, and the house dessert is a flat cake of chocolate mousse rimmed with fragile pastry petals.

Tournesol, a new French restaurant in Studio City in the old Portofino space, takes its name from the French word for sunflower. Owners Patrice and Marie-Doree Lambert and chef Francois Meulien evoke Provence--and its fields of lavender and sunflowers--with French country furniture, collages and a mural of the landscape. The valet parking attendant is decked out in a sunflower print tie.

When we ask our waiter where the chef is from, he answers, “Provencal--er, Provence. I don’t really know that part of France.” But he’s getting a quick lesson in it now.

The menu does have some Provencal touches, including an “inauthentic” Nicoise salad made with grilled tuna instead of the traditional tinned, along with quail eggs and crispy wonton skins, of all things--an idea borrowed from the ever-popular Chinese chicken salad.

Meulien turns out an appealing southern French escargots dish that mixes the earthy snails with fresh tomato, mushrooms, and just a touch of garlic in a thyme butter sauce. There’s a clam and black mussel soup that tastes, mostly, of cream, and a pleasant salad of lump crab meat with a little shrimp, scallops and avocado.

Poached salmon hardly ever appears on menus anymore. Tournesol’s take on this classic, with steamed potatoes and fennel and a lovely aioli served on the side, is delicious.

Falling-off-the-bone braised lamb shank comes with rosemary mashed potatoes, and for the old guard who’ve never met a duck a l’orange they didn’t like, Meulien prepares that, too--with the contemporary touch of vanilla and an accompaniment of crepes embedded with dark rice.

It’s the kind of food you could find at any French resort along the Cote d’Azur--competent and correct, but not very soulful.

I get the feeling the French owners and chef are cautiously testing the waters to see what people like and don’t like. Fortunately, there is enough to like about this new restaurant to warrant going back--for lunch, say, on that sunny sidewalk patio.

*

Tournesol, 13251 Ventura Blvd., Studio City; (818) 986-3190. Open for dinner daily, and for lunch Monday to Friday. Dinner appetizers, $7 to $14; main courses, $18 to $27. Valet parking.