Menu at Del Mar Bistro Garden More Like an Epicurean Fashion Plate

As the decade lazes to a close, the menu at the Del Mar Bistro Garden at the new and agreeable Del Mar Inn suggests a minor if fascinating revelation about the cooking of the 1980s: ingredients have become comparable to hemlines.

A glance down the list of entrees reads something like a Fifth Avenue fashion parade for foods. Those ingredients that may as well have come off the designer shelf are noted here in italics, and are numerous. In the 1990s, at least a few of them presumably will go the way of the mini or the maxi, perhaps to return in a later age.

There are, for example, Wisconsin duckling with cepes , and a “California coq au vin” of chicken braised in Zinfandel with pancetta , onions and carrots. The sauteed boneless breast of chicken arrives stuffed with goat cheese and basil , the Norwegian salmon mesquite grilled with cilantro beurre blanc . Grilled jumbo shrimp may be naked and unsauced, but they garnish a bed of angel hair pasta dressed with tomato concasse , herbs, lemon juice, shallots and olive oil .

In ‘80s terms, the menu would be incomplete without five spice baked halibut with black and pink peppercorns . It also gets the necessary accents from the morels that garnish the veal chop , and the onion confit that glamorizes the otherwise Plain Jane New York steak.

Two Ageless Classics

However, just as a few very proper ladies always wear their hems at mid-calf, the menu concludes with two ageless classics, a rack of lamb roasted with rosemary and garlic, and filet of beef with goose liver pate and truffled brown sauce.

The nice thing about this roster of ingredients is that it has greatly expanded our eating options, both by introducing novelties that formerly belonged only to specific ethnic cuisines (pancetta is Italian belly bacon, for example), and by internationalizing others, as in the cilantro beurre blanc, which puts a Mexican accent on a quintessentially French butter sauce.

These dishes add up to a fine menu for the Del Mar Bistro Garden, a descriptively named eatery that encompasses a pair of dining rooms and a handsome outdoor terrace. Dinner is possible outside, but because Southern California restaurant patrons generally disdain the great outdoors at night, the garden terrace sees most of its action at lunch; the dining rooms, with their high pitched ceilings and white walls, have a sort of French country look but the casually chic atmosphere typical of the North County coast.

Trendiness is the watchword in all departments of the menu, which starts out calmly enough with an appetizer of oysters on the half shell, but plunges immediately into ahi sashimi (thinly sliced raw Hawaiian tuna with Japanese seasonings), gravad lax (Scandinavian cured salmon), a casserole of snails and cured ham and, for the nutritionally nervous, a plate of mesquite grilled vegetables with garlic mayonnaise.

Tradition returns briefly on the soup list with the onion soup gratinee , but vanishes again with the lobster and leek bisque en croute . This soup had the potential to be good, but it tasted of commercial lobster soup base, included far too much leek and was canopied by soggy, half-baked commercial puff pastry that would have been happier had it remained in its box. Caesar and spinach salads dominate the greenery patch. But the less assertive Bistro salad is really quite nice, because it stylishly tosses the best greens with fresh herbs, lemon and a mixture of oils.

Blended and Balanced

Pizza and pasta also appear, as they virtually must these days, and occasionally in wild guises, such as the moo shu shrimp pizza and the lobster-stuffed ravioli with cream, Port and rosemary. The angel hair pasta with sauteed scallops and a lightly creamy sauce elaborated from decent Chardonnay is calmer and quite tasty, the flavors beautifully blended and balanced.

Among the entrees, the grilled veal chop is outstanding. All that really is required here are a thoughtfully cut, well-trimmed piece of meat and a cook who knows how to grill it, both elements usually lacking with restaurant veal chops. The Del Mar Bistro Garden did send out a carefully done chop, however, and the forest-perfumed morel mushrooms, so perfect for the meat, were lavishly apportioned. The plate garnish included a fancy arrangement of crisply cooked tiny yellow squash, waffle-cut carrots and pea pods, as well as a small cake of gratin dauphinoise , or cream-scalloped potatoes.

The grilled giant sea scallops also pleased, not only for the lightness of the kitchen’s touch (they were barely done, and ever so juicy), but for the brilliant, emerald-colored tarragon puree that gave them such a lift. Color and much additional flavor also came from the topping of grilled red bell pepper bits, which were arranged in decorative crowns atop each of the shellfish.

The dessert cart offers mostly catered products and is of limited interest. But guests who plan ahead and order the Belgian chocolate souffle when they give the dinner order will find themselves, at meal’s end, dipping up a Sybaritic soup of gooey puffed chocolate and velvety custard sauce.

This restaurant’s luncheon menu also is quite attractive. Many items repeat from dinner, but the composed salads are served only at lunch and are sometimes stunning.

The finest salad is the Del Mar Cobb, which substitutes crab, shrimp and tiny scallops for the traditional turkey and bacon and carefully decorates them with avocado, tomato and a wonderfully generous sprinkling of crumbled blue cheese. The California chicken salad also is handled well, the sliced breast meat tossed with raspberry vinegar and deliciously musty walnut oil for moistening, and with snow peas, lettuces and shredded vegetables for substance.

An Unusual Sandwich

None of the sandwiches were sampled, but the list includes an ahi “burger” of grilled tuna steak on a bun with marinated roasted peppers and avocado; a sandwich of roast turkey carved from a whole roasted turkey rather than from one of those insidious commercial turkey rolls, and an unusual club sandwich of mesquite grilled chicken breast with pesto mayonnaise, bacon, lettuce and tomato.

Among the entrees, the only dish that does not also appear on the dinner list is the crab and spinach omelet. The kitchen included plenty of crab in the fluffy egg mixture (James Beard said that shellfish must be served lavishly or not at all, and it is impossible to disagree), but the flavor overall was quite flat. The simple addition of an herb--tarragon would be ideal--would have brought up both the crab and the eggs, and melded them into something far better than this workmanlike but dull omelet.

DEL MAR BISTRO GARDEN

Del Mar Inn, 1540 Camino Del Mar

259-1515

Breakfast, lunch and dinner daily.

Credit cards accepted.

Meals for two, including a glass of wine, tax and tip, average $25 to $40 at lunch and $35 to $80 at dinner.