A French Find

Who says you have to troll Ventura Boulevard to find good food?

Almost 17 years ago, Juan Alonso returned home from a six-month sojourn to Europe. He’d spent two years selling real estate in Southern California, and before that he worked as chef in places like Le Petit Cafe in Hollywood, now long gone. He was at loose ends.

The story he tells people is that, wandering around one day, he ran out of gas in front of a grungy biker hangout in Saugus--a big stone house under some oaks outside of town that was built in the 1920s and is memorable to some as a location in the Steven Spielberg film “Duel.”

Alonso bought the place and opened his restaurant, Le Chene (or The Oak), and if you hanker for French cooking that ranges from the traditional to the highly unusual, head up the hill to this place.

“This was a funky old beer joint, a hangout for bikers. I found it almost by accident,” Alonso says. “I used all the money I had to get it ready, and on the day we opened, I had only $100 left.

“That’s why I’m still the chef,” he says with a laugh. “I have to run the show. Sometimes I just have to take a day off.”

Since he runs the show, you can thank Alonso for such traditional fare as shrimp Provencal, filet au poivre, salmon Florentine on pasta, chicken Montmorency, and duck amaretto, plus a number of unusual dishes that reflect Alonso’s French and Spanish parentage and his love for a good sauce.

Chief among the latter is his shrimp Escoffier, an homage to the great French chef Auguste Escoffier that consists of fresh shrimp, Spanish sherry and a touch of cream. Alonso also serves sauteed rabbit in a sauce of white wine and mustard, and sweetbreads sauced with morel mushrooms and cognac.

Alonso likes to experiment with his specials, among them dishes featuring venison, quail, and medallions of ostrich meat sauteed with a little garlic and shiitake mushrooms and sauced with brandy and cream. You find the specials listed on a blackboard every day.

Prices are under $19.50, as a rule, for regular menu items, somewhat more for specials, depending on availability and market prices.

Alonso will host a wine auction Sept. 13 to benefit the local Meals on Wheels operation, for the sixth year in a row. Some of the wines will come from Alonso’s own cellar, which counts some 850 bottles of French and California wines, and others from local suppliers and collectors. The auction raised $20,000 last year.

* Le Chene is at 12625 W. Sierra Highway, Saugus (805) 251-4315.

*

You’re too late to get Baja louvar--a very rare whitefish netted in the Gulf of California in the early weeks of summer every year--at Sid’s Seafood House in Canoga Park. But there’s still time for the restaurant’s Maryland soft-shell crabs and the steamed whole Dungeness crab from Alaska, which will remain available through the end of this month.

The Cuban-born Sid Lopez, who opened the restaurant 14 years ago next month, delights in tracking seafood rarely seen in these parts. Hence the Baja louvar, available for only a few weeks every year and, as Lopez puts it, so white you won’t believe it.

Lopez started working in restaurants in Havana when he was 13. More than 30 years ago, as a young man in Southern California, he found work in the Hungry Tiger restaurant chain, operated by a handful of the famous Flying Tigers pilots of World War II. Like so many others who run restaurants in Southern California, he worked his way up from dishwasher to manager and now is owner of his own place.

Lopez knows fishermen and suppliers from Baja California to Alaska and from the West Coast to the East, including one who supplies the White House. His people send him salmon from Norway and Alaska, Ipswich clams from New England, wall-eyed pike from the cold, deep-water lakes of the upper Midwest and Canada, and haddock from the waters off New England.

Lopez’s chefs Victor Betancourt and Javier Telles don’t fancy up the seafood dishes with complicated sauces; you can get your fish broiled, pan fried, blackened or sauteed. The point is the fish itself, not what you might put on it.

Prices run from $10.95 for Pacific snapper to $22.95 for the Maryland soft-shell crabs.

* Sid’s Seafood House serves dinner seven nights a week. It is at 21911 Roscoe Blvd., Canoga Park. (818) 887-1692.

Juan Hovey writes about the restaurant scene in the San Fernando Valley and outlying points. Call (805) 492-7909, fax (805) 492-5139 or e-mail JHoveycompuserve.com