RESTAURANT REVIEW : A Sampling of Paris on the Strip

Every time I tried to find someone to go out to eat with me at Clafoutis, I had the following conservation:

“Where are we going to lunch?”

“Clafoutis.”

“Where?”

“Clafoutis. On Sunset. On the Strip.”

“Is it a restaurant?”

“Yes. It’s a very pleasant little French cafe.”

“What’s it called again?”

“ Clah-foo-tee. Like the French dessert.”

Even in an era of competitively enigmatic restaurant names--MaBe, Cicada, DC-3--Clafoutis, the name, distinguishes itself.

A small bakery and cafe spilling out onto the sidewalk of the eastern Sunset Strip, Clafoutis is as close to a small Parisian cafe as I’ve found in Los Angeles. Customers gravitate to the outside patio where, under canvas umbrellas and a pink awning, they eat elbow to elbow. The crowd is an eye-catching mixture of show-biz types, Strip office workers and Hollywood Hills dwellers wandering in for a wake-up jolt of good, strong cafe au lait. French and Italian can be heard. There’s always something visually interesting going on, even if it is just the spectacle of someone trying unsuccessfully to parallel park a Range Rover at the curb.

Inside Clafoutis, there are a scattering of tables up front by the bakery cases--not a place to sit if you’re counting calories. There is also a back dining room, a small pink room with a good view of the city to the south and, on the walls, photographs of Mediterranean sites and the Acropolis.

The food at Clafoutis is standard, French cafe food. It is not nouvelle. It is not California-French. It is not fancy. It is largely what you might find in any number of cafes in any number of French cities--sandwiches, omelets, salads, etc. It is simple, authentic and likable.

Clafoutis is particularly pleasant in the mornings. Croissants come with good, not-too-sweet homemade preserves. The coffee is good and poured frequently. Breakfasts are enormous. Although the three-egg ratatouille omelet was slightly more done than I liked, it had a good flavor and came with gloriously rich and good potato gratin. The spinach and mushroom quiche, more a brunch dish, comes with two deli salads.

All the soups I tried were good, especially the onion soup. Topped with bread and excellent cheese, this was a particularly flavorful version of the old standby. A “fresh pea” soup tasted and looked very much like a flavorful, light split pea soup; fresh or split, we ate every drop. “Julienne,” another soup of the day, was a mild and compelling smooth puree of celery and potato with a colorful scattering of julienne vegetables.

Salads are tasty, too, thanks largely to the strong representation of good endive and more flavorful greens in the standard salad mix. A special smoked salmon salad was composed of very good smoked salmon on lightly dressed mixed greens with a side of mustard-dill mayonnaise for added accent. The warm chicken salad had great, juicy chunks of chicken and pleasurably bitter curly endive. Only the Caesar was disappointing--underdressed and uninspired.

The angel hair pasta comes with fresh basil and fresh, slightly charred tomatoes. The crepes, which look like indistinct small casseroles, reminded me why I don’t like crepes; they are just too cheesy, too creamy, too gloppy. The pate plate has both country and duck pates , and comes with lively small salads and Clafoutis’ own French bread.

Clafoutis is open seasonally for dinner. For now, at least, the same printed menu serves both lunch and dinner, although it is supplemented with reasonably priced, well-balanced dinner specials. Small details still need to be ironed out; salads come with some entrees, not with others. Otherwise, I was as pleased at dinner time as I had been at breakfast and lunch. Beef tournedos, a special, were two very good, tender, perfectly cooked little steaks in an unobjectionable sweet-and-sour pepper sauce. I loved the sea bass, which was as light and moist as a cloud. And I loved the mushroom-and-cream sauce on the halibut.

Although I am not an avid dessert eater, I could never leave Clafoutis without ordering one of its glamorous pastries and some of its satisfying coffee. Others might argue, but my personal favorites are a lemon custard tart and an eye-catching fresh fruit tart that looked like Carmen Miranda’s bonnet and is served with a pleasing light pastry cream. And the clafoutis? There is none. The ingredients, I’m told, are too hard to find.

Clafoutis, 8630 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, (310) 659-5233. Breakfast and lunch seven days, dinner Wednesday through Sunday. Beer and wine. Parking in back. Discover, MasterCard and Visa. Dinner for two, food only, $21 to $46.