Water Grill’s crucial moment

In the years BC -- before Cimarusti -- Water Grill was just another expensive fish restaurant. It was Michael Cimarusti who turned the downtown seafood house into one of the best restaurants in all of Southern California. So when he left last year, it was quite a blow. The owners dealt with it by proceeding as if he were still in the kitchen.

And even when they finally found a new chef in David LeFevre, a Charlie Trotter protege, the owners seemed hesitant to hand over the kitchen.

Instead of immediately donning an apron, LeFevre was sent to train at every other station in the restaurant. And when he finally did get behind the stoves, Water Grill fans who’d stop in to see what the new chef was doing would find, to their disappointment, that he was still basically cooking the menu he’d inherited from Cimarusti.

LeFevre is hardly inexperienced. The 32-year-old chef has an excellent resume, which includes brief stints at two of the world’s cutting-edge restaurants: El Bulli in Spain and Tetsuya’s in Australia. Here, quite possibly, was somebody who could reinvigorate Water Grill’s kitchen, and the fact that he wasn’t a Puck or a Patina alum meant he might bring some new ideas to the table. So why not let him really cook?

Happily, months later, LeFevre’s own menu is pretty much in place, and the kitchen, which had floundered after Cimarusti left, is pretty much back on track.

Delicate texture

LeFevre is deep into slow-cooked fish, and uses several techniques. His “slow-steamed” halibut, for example, has an almost custardy texture. The technique, instead of drying out the fish, preserves its delicacy. Setting its white snowy flesh against artichokes scented with coriander and a kalamata olive puree highlights the halibut’s purity. It’s a beautiful dish.

The chef favors olive oil-poached fish and butter-poached lobsters too, both au courant techniques that have been making the rounds of high-end seafood restaurants across the country. What the two have in common is the way they retain the integrity of the seafood. But precisely because the taste is so plain and direct, it’s tempting to lay on the embellishments to create more interest and drama.

Yukon River king salmon, which replaces Copper River salmon now that the short season is over, is poached in olive oil, which keeps the fish incredibly moist. The chef accompanies the salmon with a sweetish sunchoke puree, pretty green fava beans and English peas in a vinaigrette with musky morel mushrooms. It’s a satisfying, though not particularly exciting dish.

Butter-poached Maine lobster is a summery dish served with sweet corn, a dash of cumin-scented sauce and beef-cheek tortellini, which seem to be there more because they make the dish sound more interesting than for any particular affinity to lobster.

I have to say I liked the Rhode Island striped bass the best of all the fish dishes I tried. Striped bass has a wonderful flavor, enhanced by the contrast between the crisp crust on one side and the moist flesh on the other. Set down on a lovely lemon-scented potato puree, the garnishes of caper vinaigrette and garlic confit with bits of salty-tart preserved lemon work nicely.

The splendid fruits of the sea platter makes a festive appetizer. Priced per person, it includes a selection of oysters and littleneck clams, steamed mussels, Mexican white shrimp, some crab and lobster too, and comes with a quartet of sauces, the saffron aioli definitely in the lead. Everything is pristine and perfectly cooked, though the selection is not as exotic as it was in the old days when you could get periwinkles and sea snails to eat with a special pin.

LeFevre’s crab cake stands out too. Tall and proud, it’s made with both Maryland blue and Dungeness crab and is basically pure lump crabmeat. It comes with pickled pink onions and thinly sliced Japanese cucumber on top, a fine mint-suffused couscous underneath, and a yogurt-lime-cucumber sauce. The flavors make complete sense.

Water Grill spends big on bringing in top-notch seafood from not only this country, but also around the world. The current menu, though, seems more limited than it was in the past. The choice of dishes and the range of seafood are smaller, making me wonder how much say the new chef really has in the menu at this point.

Finding a rhythm

Curiously, the tasting menu is not the way to go at Water Grill. Tasting menus are designed to show off the chef’s best cooking. It’s the chance for him to orchestrate a meal from start to finish, to find a rhythm and flow that doesn’t necessarily happen when customers order willy-nilly a la carte.

But it can also show up the chef’s limitations. Course after course, in this case, it’s easier to see how similar, except for the embellishments, so many of the dishes are. And it’s not just because the menu is limited to seafood.

A recent tasting menu begins with a brilliant flourish: hamachi with pistachios and a citrus pesto -- both sour and salty, with a slash of lemon yellow sauce. The fish could be slightly colder, but this is interesting stuff. A foie gras course, though, seems more dutiful than anything else: a dab of chilled foie gras au torchon paired with orange marmalade next to a sliver of seared foie gras with sloe gin and plums.

It’s followed by several fish courses, the best of which is Colorado River sturgeon with sliced, roasted ruby beets garnished with horseradish cream, baby celery leaves and sevruga caviar. But by the time we get to the John Dory with cashews, broccolini and oven-roasted raisins, we’re fished out. The effect is just a bit monotonous.

LeFevre is hardworking and capable, with definite ideas about how best to cook seafood. Yet there’s something about his cooking at Water Grill that seems tentative. Does he feel hemmed in? Months later, his name is not yet on the restaurant’s website. In fact, long after Cimarusti’s departure, the website featured a statement from him though he was no longer in the kitchen.

Now, however, the message seems to be the opposite: It’s not about the chef; it’s the restaurant that counts.

Deja vu desserts

After longtime pastry chef Wonyee Tom left late last year to open her own pastry shop in Huntington Beach, the King cousins -- who own a string of restaurants, including Ocean Avenue Seafood in Santa Monica and 555 East in Long Beach -- took exactly the same tack as they did when Cimarusti left. Koa Duncan, formerly of Bastide, underwent the same training LeFevre did; that is, working every station before she finally took up her own.

But the dessert menu hasn’t budged much. Tom’s signature vanilla bean creme brulee, eggy and incredibly silky, freckled with vanilla bean, is still there. And so is the tender chocolate brioche pudding, served warm, with excellent vanilla bean ice cream.

Duncan does have a pistachio financier on the menu, but it might be better off without the sweet peaches layered between, and just with the tart yogurt sorbet to offset the cake’s sweetness. But I gather it’s a work in progress.

The new Water Grill is still finding its footing as it makes the transition from the old to the new. It hasn’t been altogether smooth. Cimarusti had made an impression because his cooking was so personal and eclectic.

Now, LeFevre has to be left free to find his own voice, or Water Grill will become just what it was before: an expensive seafood restaurant and not much more.

*

Water Grill

Rating: ** 1/2

Location: 544 S. Grand Ave., Los Angeles; (213) 891-0900; www.watergrill.com.

Ambience: Downtown seafood house in the grand historic Pacific Center with a raw bar at the front and a stolid dining room with plush royal blue booths along the wall. A haven for convention-goers and people who work downtown, it can be virtually empty one night, impossible to get a reservation the next.

Service: Attentive and professional, with excellent teamwork.

Price: Dinner first courses, $13 to $27 (for fruits of the sea platter); oysters on the half shell, $14 to $19.50 per half a dozen; main courses, $28 to $49; desserts, $9 to $10; chef’s tasting menu, $85 per person.

Best dishes: Fruits of the sea platter, Dungeness and blue crab cake, olive oil poached salmon, striped bass with lemon-scented potato puree, slow-poached loup de mer, creme brulee, chocolate brioche pudding.

Wine list: Although not what it once was, it’s still wide-ranging for downtown. Good selection of half bottles and wines by the glass, including reserve wines. Corkage, $20.

Best table: One of the booths along the wall.

Details: Open 11:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday and Tuesday, until 10 p.m. Wednesday through Friday; 5 to 9:45 p.m. Saturday, and 4:30 to 8:45 p.m. Sunday. Full bar. Valet parking, $4.

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.