My ‘life advisor’ sent me

WHENEVER someone asked me for a recommendation for fine dining in the farther reaches of the San Fernando Valley, somewhere to go to celebrate a graduation or an anniversary, I could count the number of suggestions on one hand -- and they were always the same. Could there now be another one?

Hampton’s at the new Four Seasons Westlake Village sounds like it’s got potential. The chef, Sandro Gamba, has some serious credentials and is turning out ambitious California-French food with a twist.

It’s healthy.

You’ll notice a sign for the adjacent California WellBeing Institute, pet project of 83-year-old billionaire businessman David H. Murdock, chief executive of Dole Food Co. next door. Institute clients can hole up in the 270-room Four Seasons where -- in addition to a 40,000-square-foot full-service spa, serenity pool and Chinese poet’s pagoda house and meditation lawn -- there’s Hampton’s, offering contemporary California-French food with the butter and dairy (and presumably) the calories stripped away. (There’s also a sushi restaurant in the hotel.)

Think of the hotel and adjacent institute -- described as an oasis of well-being -- as a live-in doctor’s office with comfy mattresses, high-thread-count linens, all manner of spa pampering, doctors and “life advisors” galore. And should you be feeling peckish, a high-end restaurant -- with delightful amuses-bouche, serious wines, lovely (but light) desserts and a hyper-eager team of waiters and managers bent on serving you. The restaurant isn’t just for institute clients: It’s come one, come all.

Hampton’s cultivates the formal atmosphere of a posh hotel restaurant, but I’m a little disappointed. There are no bathrobe-wearing gourmands in evidence. Everybody is dressed up in a California casual kind of way. One gentleman peels off his black leather jacket to reveal a pricey pseudo-rocker T-shirt. A woman across the room is wearing upscale cargo pants and a wee top, the better to show off her tanned well being.

Because Hampton’s is about the fanciest thing in the neighborhood, it’s getting plenty of action from locals. It’s become the place that parents take their adult children out for dinner, and vice versa. At one table, a wine buff is holding forth to a less-than-fascinated audience of friends. A couple, obviously here on a date, search for a topic of conversation. Unlike the rowdy billiards players in the bar, nobody in the dining room looks as if they’re having all that much fun.

Part of the problem is the stuffiness of the decor. Part of it is the staff, who are all heroically trying to live up to their training in fine dining and seem terrified to make a mistake. The hand setting down the fish fork at my place trembles. The waiter pouring our wine is shaking so much the tension is excruciating. Turn your head to look around the room and a manager and a couple of servers rush over to see if you need anything. I feel for them, I really do, but they’re making everybody uncomfortable. Time to take a deep breath and relax. Om.

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Spa food but not extreme

THE kitchen under the direction of executive chef Gamba is cooking with confidence and ability. At 37, Gamba has an impressive resume as former chef at Lespinasse in Washington, D.C., and at NoMI in Chicago. Earlier on, he worked with Michelin-starred French chefs Alain Ducasse and Joel Robuchon.

In his menu here, he’s decided against segregating the spa dishes -- which aren’t even indicated on the menu. Instead, he mixes his lighter fish and vegetable dishes in with the type of dishes you’d expect to find in any contemporary French restaurant, leaving the choice up to the diner. And while the kitchen eschews butter and cream, not all the food is exactly light, since Gamba tends to use heavy reductions to bolster the flavor of the dishes instead.

The amuse might be a white corn soup with “chard droplets.” The soup’s flavor is muted though. With it is a stainless steel spoon with the handle bent back on itself that holds a roasted Sweet 100 cherry tomato drizzled with a vinegary sweet balsamic reduction.

You could follow that with a sunchoke soup that plays up the earthy sweetness of these less familiar tubers. The garnish is a chive coulis and a row of miniature lumpia (spring rolls) filled with gluey goat cheese.

Dungeness crab cannelloni is made not with pasta but a thin slice of cucumber wrapped around the fresh lump crabmeat and presented with a grapefruit-citrus vinaigrette. This is very good. So is the Alaskan salmon confit that’s been cured in a way that seems to underscore the delicate flavor of the salmon and give the flesh a silken, almost jellied texture. Served with thinly sliced Meyer lemon and fennel ribbons topped with a scoop of superb American caviar, it’s one of the highlights of the appetizer menu. Low calorie? Probably, but delicious by any measure.

If this is spa food, it’s not extreme in any way. It’s like having your cake and eating it too.

Morel season is just starting, and Gamba’s cassolette of morels would qualify as one of the richer items on offer. Served in a copper pan, the big meaty morels are topped with pork belly that, as the waiter explains as if it’s some sleight of hand, has been slowly cooked until all the fat melts away. Good trick. There are also a few appealing crispy bits of pork belly shaved as thin as slide samples. I’m ready to love this. The pork belly is delicious, but the morels have soaked up a heavy reduction like so many sponges, so the musky flavor of the prized mushroom is obliterated.

Diver scallops are sweet and big as pincushions, but though a smear of pureed English peas and a scattering of pearl onions and fava beans may be spa-friendly, it makes for a dull dish.

By this point in the evening, I’m regretting having angled for the table with a two-seater sofa at one end instead of a more formal setup with old-fashioned armchairs. Even if you’re 6 feet tall, the sofas are too low for the tables. I switch places with one of my taller guests (even he looks like a kid sitting there), and now I can take in the view outside the floor-to-ceiling windows.

A waterfall tumbles down a pile of artfully arranged boulders from the River Kwai in Thailand crowned by a grove of 50 sequoias. I don’t know. To me, it conveys Las Vegas more than “oasis of well-being.”

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More simplicity, please

MAIN courses are organized under categories such as “from the ocean,” “from the fields,” or “from the land.” Feeling like somebody from the fields, I go with the zucchini marmalade ravioli with balsamic-tomato jam and golden tomato broth. This is a serious mistake. The ravioli dough is clumsy, and the flavor of the zucchini is stamped out by a sharp, excruciatingly sweet tomato-balsamic jam. Worse, it’s a sure-fire wine killer.

Crispy gulf snapper is crispy as advertised, but completely dried out inside. Too bad, because the accompaniments -- soft roasted eggplant, baby artichokes and roasted tomato with basil -- are delicious.

With braised beef short ribs and beef tenderloin we are moving into the realm of hotel food as usual. It’s good beef, expertly cooked, and that’s about all to be said for it. The same goes for the lamb medallions. Poached Maine lobster with fresh corn ragout is just that, fine but unexceptional. The most interesting thing about the dish is the vibrant fresh corn.

Shelton’s Farm chicken is prepared two ways, both of them overcooked. And I don’t know quite what to make of Dover sole with plantains and clams in a bouillabaisse sauce. Each of the elements is fine, but altogether, the flavors are disconcerting.

All in all, Hampton’s menu is not as compelling as I’d expect from someone who’s headed up Lespinasse and who has worked with world-class chefs. Gamba’s menu aims for simplicity and freshness, yet many of the dishes seem overworked and are marred by overly reduced sauces. All his finesse and background are not enough to make the dining experience register as anything more than hotel food with typical bells and whistles.

Keeping with the idea of all things in moderation, the wine list offers a number of half bottles, perfect for a couple who want to drink both a white and a red. It may not be the most exciting selection, but it’s nice to see those small bottles, which are difficult to come by. Champagne would be a good choice here too; there’s a nice selection of vintage and nonvintage sparklers.

It’s a decent wine list for such a new hotel, and includes such curiosities as Rosenthal Chardonnay from Malibu and Brewer Clifton “Sea Smoke” from the Santa Rita Hills. But the hotel needs to work on the wine service.

A couple of desserts are worth noting. “1,000 layers” (read mille feuille) is three thin sheaves of pastry curled up like a skateboarders’ run and layered with a fine-spun pistachio cream and raspberries. It’s feather-light yet satisfies that urge for something luscious to end the meal. I love the flavor of the coconut panna cotta served with fresh pineapple. If the pastry chef would cut down on the gelatin, this would be the star of the dessert menu.

Do I walk out feeling revitalized? Not exactly. I walk out feeling grateful for my friends. Without them, this would have felt more like a business affair at a high-end hotel than a dinner out for the fun of it. Hampton’s may need more time to come into its own. But right now the highlights of the menu -- basically the appetizers -- aren’t enough to make it more than a respectable fallback for a neighborhood that’s needed more choices.

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virbila@latimes.com

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Hampton’s

Rating: * 1/2

Location: Four Seasons Hotel Westlake Village, 2 Dole Drive, Westlake Village, (818) 575-3000; www.fourseasons.com/westlakevillage.

Ambience: Luxury hotel restaurant with well-appointed but stodgy dining room looking onto a Las Vegas-style waterfall of rocks and sequoia trees. Tables are large and the room is quiet enough for conversation, enough to recommend it for trysts and dining with relatives or business acquaintances. The food is contemporary French sans the butter and cream from a chef with a strong background.

Service: Nervous and overly solicitous from a green staff overseen by a flotilla of managers.

Price: Dinner appetizers, $12 to $16; main courses, $23 to $41; dessert, $8.

Best dishes: Dungeness lump crab cucumber cannelloni, confit of salmon, sunchoke soup, beef “100,” Colorado lamb rack, coconut panna cotta with pineapple, caramelized 1,000 layers with pistachio cream.

Wine list: Strong on Central Coast and other California wines with a nice collection of half bottles. Corkage fee, $25.

Best table: A table for two against the windows looking onto the artificial waterfall.

Details: Open for dinner 5:30 to 10 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays, for brunch 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sundays. Full bar. Valet parking, $5 with validation.

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.