The little French place that shines

“La CACHETTE” is French for stash box. Oh, dear, wrong dictionary. Here’s the Larousse. La Cachette ... La Cachette ... La Cachette ... means hideaway.

Hmm. In the case of La Cachette the French restaurant in Century City, this definition is kitschy but accurate. It’s hidden away all right, behind a mountain of rubble from what is beginning to seem like permanent road work on Santa Monica Boulevard. You get there after passing it on the main road, realizing it is really on Little Santa Monica Boulevard, going several blocks in the wrong direction, making an illegal U-turn, then an illegal left into a shady side street. There it is, a little French joint, awnings and all, its nose just out of the fray.

To get inside, you need to go around back through the alley. This detour delivers you somewhere small, shady and sweetly ramshackle. A valet sits near an arbor strung with fairy lights. You enter up the back stairs and through a hallway to a small reception area with a big couch and lots of faintly gastronomic reading material, menus, wine magazines, the usual. The man who greets you with a smile and a delighted lift of the arms must be the one who took your booking, who, when you asked about dress, said, “Casual elegant.” Beyond him is a swagged and padded dining room.

If it sounds familiar, it’s because La Cachette opened 10 years ago. It is so well established that if you dial a wrong number in the Westwood exchange, a woman who answers might respond to your apology, “I get these calls all the time. Good restaurant.” Even on a Monday night, there will be a critical mass of locals: well-fed, content-looking types who know the staff by name and luxuriate at the tables as if they were in their own dining rooms.

A word about this dining room. It’s so conservative, it would make George Burns feel young, if he weren’t dead. In other words, it’s a picture-perfect French restaurant. Everything is there to enhance the serving and enjoying of food. There are yards of good linen -- even wrapped around the water jugs to catch condensation -- good cutlery, good glassware, comfortable chairs and banquettes. Lighting is muted. This is the look of a Michelin one-star anywhere in Europe.

However, open the menu and you could only be in L.A. For starters, the menu is in English. Chef-owner Jean Francois Meteigner has come to know Americans well enough to realize that we like to understand when we’re ordering sweetbreads. And in 10 years at L’Orangerie, then another 10 at La Cachette, he’s also come to appreciate some other things about Angelenos -- starting with the observation that celebrities eat strangely. So the menu of this French restaurant has a disturbing collection of world food, pan-everywhere food, dairy-free food.

Take it from a diner who tried the “non-dairy Dungeness crab and lobster bisque,” which tasted like burnt rubber: The art to eating well in all French restaurants, and particularly this one, is to stick to dishes that are actually French.

Here Meteigner’s kitchen shines, and there is plenty of food that authentically French people would recognize as French. Try if you must the usual Michelin one-star luxury dishes: the caviar, the smoked salmon, the foie gras with brioche. They’re capably turned out. The foie gras was fine, if bland. A far simpler starter of fillets of smoked salmon served with hot little blini and a selection of garnishes including sour cream and caviar, chopped onions and capers delivered honest pleasure.

As is so often the case even in Michelin-starred restaurants, the humblest dish was the runaway best: sardine fillets served with potatoes. Oily fish are so much more flavorful than white fish, but give them to a Frenchman who knows how to ride the acidity and sear the skin and you have a sharp kitchen savor so arresting it could draw an entire family from the fields around a Provencal lunch table.

The second best starter was the French classic of garlicky snails, the petit-gris type, which tasted much like mushrooms but with better bite, and were simply delicious.

The main courses explain the sated mood that settles over the dining room, its distinct lack of bustle. When it comes to main courses, the kitchen quite simply knows how to feed its customers.

At the ladylike end of the spectrum, wild salmon was served perfectly cooked over braised fennel. The upshot was delicate. The fish could not have been fresher and the floral aromatics of the fennel arrived intact.

The roasted rack of lamb was rare but not gamey. It was a lamb, the genuinely young kind. According to the menu, all manner of stuff went into the basting sauce -- Dijon mustard, tapenade and horseradish. It dissolved into roast-pan meatiness. The kitchen remained sure-handed with the reddest of red meats, angus New York steak, and, to the side, a bowl of perfect frites.

So much better than freedom fries.

Peking duck “cooked two ways” is probably meant to strike Oriental notes, but the impact was decidedly French. Leg meat was dense and rich as a good confit, while rare medallions of breast had a fresher, more steak-like sweetness. Cooked huckleberries and braised cabbage caught the sweetness in a different key and simply seconded the flavors.

This is a restaurant where it would be faintly criminal to pass on dessert. It seems odd at first when the waiters ask you to order it at the same time as the main course; the desserts are all made to order, however, so the waiters are trying to keep the kitchen from shorting out.

Souffles are perfect. A chocolate souffle came standing proud, ready for a sharp poke with the fork and the addition of more chocolate sauce. A Grand Marnier souffle had perfect structure and a caramelized sweetness, and not a hint of the egginess that betrays overcooking. An apple tart on a perfect puff comes with the luxurious accompaniments of caramel sauce and vanilla ice cream. The one pre-made dessert ordered, profiteroles, were good, but it was an unavoidable truth at our table: The person who ordered them didn’t do nearly as well as we souffle eaters.

The restaurant lobby is full of certificates from Wine Spectator, suggesting it’s a hangout of oenophiles. If this is the case, the bar needs to be reinspected and taken to task for some sleazy lapses and moments of high silliness. On a Saturday night, a request for a kir, a classic summer aperitif of floral white wine and cassis, came with an oxidized, vegetal-tasting white, cassis, and a large ring of lemon zest. Ah, just what rancidity needs, a citric fillip.

The waiter graciously replaced it with a zestless version, but the wine was still far too sour for the drink. The same night, for a table for two, a wine list wasn’t offered until the appetizers had been served, and the wines by the glass produced a really vile Rhone-style red named after Berkeley wine importer Kermit Lynch.

Yet on a Monday, with a more manageable crowd, a kir royale (in which white wine is replaced by Champagne) was perfect.

The wine list has goodies. In Burgundy, there is no reason to go higher, price-wise, than the cheapest offerings. Granted, one of the least expensive white Burgundies, a 2002 Morgeot Chassagne-Montrachet 1er Cru, was 98 bucks, but it was also gorgeous, a buttery but finessed French Chardonnay. For the main courses, the second least-expensive red Burgundy, a 2002 Savigny-les-Beaune, was a steal at $48. Consumed fast, it might never show its charm. But it required only 20 minutes in the decanter to open up to a fruity, velvety state. Extra marks should go to the staff for serving it very slightly chilled.

Be clear if you accept a suggestion of Calvados. The vintage might not be offered when you order. What the bill said was a 1969 vintage tasted like 3-year-old cooking brandy, was served in Cognac snifters and cost $24 -- a glass.

By and large, service is solicitous, charming, there when you need something, not there when you don’t. The waiters are not young, suggesting they view serving food graciously as an honorable profession, even an art, not some passing indignity before, say, starring in a deodorant commercial.

The only thing waiters systematically forgot to do in a series of visits was to bring bread. Taste it and one suspects they are forgetting it on purpose. It’s got thin crust, an airy dry crumb. The kirs, the Calvados, the bread, the world food, the “vegan without cheese” options are what let down this otherwise Michelin-level restaurant.

They are fixable flaws. All in all, 10 years in, we’re lucky to have La Cachette, a dainty Frangelena, hidden up an alley and run with skill, confidence, subtlety and care.

*

La Cachette

Rating: ** 1/2

Location: 10506 Santa Monica Blvd. (actually on Little Santa Monica Boulevard), Los Angeles, (310) 470-4992; www.lacachetterestaurant.com

Ambience: Plush and comfortable with well-laid tables, fresh flowers, customers reeking of contentment

Service: Delightful mix of proficiency and warmth. Special orders for children. A bit old-fashioned: Women may have to press for the wine list.

Price: Appetizers, $6 to $23, with one freak choice of Petrossian golden osetra caviar, $120; main courses, $26 to $35; dessert souffles, $15

Best dishes: Sardines with potatoes and capers; lightly smoked salmon with blini, sour cream, chives and capers; breast and medallions of duck with huckleberries and cabbage; salmon with fennel; 16-ounce angus steak and frites; all of the souffles; apple tart with caramel sauce and vanilla ice cream

Wine list: A $48 2002 Savigny-les-Beaune is the second-cheapest wine on the red Burgundy list, and a bargain. It needs only decanting and a bit of time to open up. A gorgeous white Burgundy, the 2002 Chassagne-Montrachet 1er Cru from Morgeot, is $98. Beware the digestifs: A fiery Calvados is $24 a glass. Corkage, $20 ($30 for a magnum).

Best table: Every table is good.

Details: Open for lunch Monday through Friday, 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.; for dinner nightly, 6 to 10 p.m. (last orders 9 p.m.). Major credit and debit cards.

Rating is based on food, service and ambience, with price taken into account in relation to quality. ****: Outstanding on every level. ***: Excellent. **: Very good. *: Good. No star: Poor to satisfactory.

*

S. Irene Virbila is on assignment. She’ll return May 19.