In Good Taste

Brother, have we got restaurants.

Well OK, I admit it: If you’re after exciting Pacific Rim fare, plates of food in vertical towers, creative recipes from hot chefs and dining rooms spawned by architects of international acclaim, you still need to take a short spin down the Ventura Freeway to Los Angeles.

But only a dreamer or a fool would insist on judging our restaurants by big-city standards, which doesn’t mean we haven’t got plenty to celebrate with our new, improved Ventura County restaurant scene. Change comes slowly but steadily in these parts, via proven trends, acquired tastes and shifting demographics.

Here’s the good news. We’ve had a spate of interesting restaurants open during the past year or so, places offering a broad range of cultural and culinary experiences. The five chosen represent an up-to-date cross-section of Ventura County restaurants. A couple even feature dishes that wouldn’t be embarrassed to appear on top of Westside Los Angeles tables.

*

Petrucci’s Bistro, the baby brother of the established and respected Petrucci’s Ristorante Italiano in Camarillo, is typical of the new generation in the area. This unassuming Italian dining room is located in an Oxnard shopping mall and serves pizza delizia, the best pizza I’ve eaten anywhere between Santa Monica and San Francisco. This is an extra-crisp masterpiece baked in a wood-fired oven and topped with a blend of imported cheeses, sweet basil and paper-thin slices of fresh tomato. And it is only one outstanding dish in a restaurant that will surely have you coming back for more.

Much of the credit goes to owner Tom Petrucci and chef Neal Rosenthal, formerly chef owner at the much ballyhooed, now defunct Eatz in Westlake Village. Rosenthal is a bespectacled eminence grise in his open kitchen adjacent to the pizza oven where Chuck Harrill turns out pizzas with smoked salmon, with proscuitto and arugula, with fire-roasted sweet peppers and other authentically Italian ingredients. Have your pizzas New York style (medium crust), Toscano style (thin crust) or, my choice, bistro special extra-thin crust, a cracker-like pie that makes a resounding crunch with each bite.

Several dishes at Petrucci’s, in fact, are worth making noise over. Antipasti such as fagioli con salsiccia--sauteed cannelini beans cooked with sweet Italian sausage, chopped tomatoes, olive oil, onions, garlic and sage--are delicious. Salmone carpaccio is even better, sensational slices of house-cured salmon slathered with a peppery mustard sauce.

The bistro makes a different risotto daily and serves nearly one dozen creatively sauced pastas. Among the more resolutely Italian entrees are anatra con vino e rosmarino--pan-seared duck breast in a red wine rosemary reduction--and fegato alla Toscan--an impossibly rich preparation of calf’s liver sauteed with pancetta bacon, brandy and caramelized onion.

The wine list features a fine selection of reasonably priced Italian wines.

* Petrucci’s Bistro, 2121 N. Rose Ave., Suite 440, Oxnard. (805) 983-1323. Open 11 a.m.-9 p.m., daily. Dinner for two, $27-$45.

*

Changing locations seems to have breathed new life into Eric Ericsson’s, now called Eric Ericsson’s on the Pier.

Apart from having one of the county’s more irresistible views--afforded by a nifty Ventura Pier perch--this is also one snazzy-looking room. Appointments in the huge, airy space include a slate gray tile floor, salmon-colored walls, zinc and hardwood dining tables and a giant skeletal fish mobile hanging from the ceiling and looking for all the world like a collaboration between Alexander Calder and the Museum of Natural History.

OK, so it isn’t gourmet food, just salt-of-the-sea, dockside Americana, and good bang for the buck to boot. My dining companion and I had to blink when our smoked fish appetizer arrived, because the portion was large enough for the Brady family. In this case, the fish was alder-smoked Oregon salmon, at least 12 ounces, cut into long chunks, served on a platter with round water crackers and a tangy kiwi-mango fruit salad.

Shellfish appetizers include Littlenecks, Pacific oysters, Manila clams and peel and eat shrimp, but none of them compare to the sweet, firm-textured Santa Barbara mussels, steamed in white wine and blanketed with a rich pesto cream sauce. Fresh fish like ono, snapper, thresher shark and swordfish are flame broiled and brought to the table with good French fries and a small salad dressed with a cocktail-sauce-like red vinaigrette. (I tried the ono and found it somewhat tasteless.)

When it comes to deep-fried dishes, the seafood tends to be thickly battered and greasy, though the quality of the products is unimpeachable. New England clam chowder is pasty and pastas are mushy, but there are attractive extras to make up for missteps. Good brews like Oregon Honey Wheat and Sierra Nevada are available on tap, and those incredible McConnell’s sorbets and ice creams head the dessert menu, proving that intelligent life does inhabit the Ventura Pier.

* Eric Ericsson’s on the Pier, 668 Harbor Blvd., Ventura. (805) 643-4873. Open 11 a.m.-11 p.m. daily. Dinner for two, $23-$49.

*

Meanwhile, in the bucolic heights of Camarillo, a Mediterranean-themed restaurant has moved into the very location that for years housed Giovanni’s, a local institution. And Nounou’s is making an impression.

No, you probably won’t eat anything from the kitchen you haven’t tasted before. But you can expect to be quite pleased by the quality, friendliness and consistency of Nounou’s, a mildly froufrou mall space staffed by waiters in black tuxedos, with a dining room dominated by an ersatz watercolor mural of a European seaside village.

Most of Nounou’s dishes are vaguely French, but the menu manages a well-traveled eclecticism, including pastas, paella and even a couple of Basque dishes. The emphatically Venetian beef carpaccio--thin slices of tender beef strewn with arugula, and then dressed properly with shaved Parmesan, capers and a thick lemon vinaigrette--makes a delightful starter.

Salade Monegasque is named for Monaco, despite its distinctly Italian bent. It’s your basic Caprese-bufala mozzarella and thick tomato slices accompanied by grilled eggplant, roasted green and red peppers, tangy whole anchovies and a light sprinkling of olive oil. Entrees come with a fine house salad or a homey vegetable soup, but for $1.50 extra it is possible to get salade Romana (a fancy Caesar) or the cheese-crusted, beef-rich onion soup, both fine in their own right.

These dishes impressed everyone at my table. Authentic Spanish paella failed to live up to its name due to an insufficiency of saffron and other paella necessities. What it was, instead, was an extremely well-prepared rice casserole chock full of shellfish and chicken. Magret de canard aux olives is perfectly pink pan-roasted duck breast in a grown-up green olive sauce. The fresh fish du jour--swordfish--drew raves because of a firm texture and a rich white wine beurre blanc. Oven-roasted lamb rack is a huge plateful of chops sauced with a whole-grain mustard demi-glace.

* Nounou’s, 5227 Mission Oaks Blvd., Camarillo. Lunch 11 a.m.- 2:30 p.m. Tuesday-Friday and 11 a.m.-2 p.m. Sunday. Dinner is 4:30-10 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday and Sunday, 4:30-11 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Dinner for two, $37-$59.

*

Cafe Provencal is the best new restaurant within close proximity to the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Center, removing the thorny problem of where to eat on show night. Decor recalls a backyard patio in the south of France, walls the color of Dijon mustard, rough-hewed wooden beams and lots of framed watercolors. Tables are attractive, too, draped in deliciously colorful French toiles.

The restaurant belongs to native Frenchmen Florence and Serge Bonnet, who recently married. Executive chef Phillippe Renggli is Swiss, and his food is safe and pleasant, with the exception of the powerfully salty black olive tapenade that everyone gets at the start, which induces a nearly unquenchable thirst.

Terrine maison, salad de chevre chaud and caviar d’aubergines are three appetizers of note. The coarsely textured terrine is a pork pate in two thin slices, while the warm goat cheese and eggplant caviar dips come in the form of three skinny toasts atop a green salad. Another worthy chestnut is cassolette d’escargots a la Provencale, earthy snails in a ceramic dish half full with a shallot, garlic, tomato and parsley butter.

Entrees could be more daring, truer to the spirit of Provence. Loup grille au fenouil et Pastis sounds the part, but is only a nice piece of fish in a beige-colored cream sauce. Filets de perche a l’estragon is really sand dabs in a light tarragon cream sauce, more northern French than Mediterranean. Gambas Lou Souleou is firmly in the spirit of things, sauteed shrimps with garlic, mushrooms, tomatoes and a touch of anisette. Jarret d’agneau aux flageolets are toothsome lamb shanks, beautifully braised, with white shell beans and a mild red wine reduction.

Desserts include a smooth, creamy chocolate creme brulee and the ubiquitous tart tatin, a caramelized apple tart. Southern French wines like Bandol rose and various low-priced Cotes du Rhone are offered from a blackboard wine list.

* Cafe Provencal, 2310 E. Thousand Oaks Blvd., Thousand Oaks. (805) 496-7121. Lunch 11 a.m.-2 p.m. Monday-Friday. Dinner 5-9 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 5-10 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Closed Sunday. Dinner for two, $24-$45.

*

The rumblings in Ojai aren’t tectonic, they are Caribbean. Calypso’s Bar and Grill--formerly home to MK’s and, more recently, Papagallo’s--has a good buzz, jaunty live Calypso music and some fun island-themed food. Just be aware that no well-seasoned traveler, mon, would call this serious cooking.

Head past the bar to the tables on the stucco outdoor patio, which is colored in soft pastels and looks remarkably like typical hangouts in Antigua or St. Kitts. Break the ice with a refreshing tropical margarita from the bar, a slushy concoction made with pureed fruits like mango and pineapple. I chumped, ordering something called the Blue Lucian, which looked and tasted like frozen Lavoris.

Every dish on the menu parenthetically lists its island or country of origin, an impressive array of compass points like Martinique, Haiti, Jamaica and Barbados, to name a few. Bang, from the Virgin Islands--a tired skillet lined with hot greasy biscuits laced with Edam cheese--went bust. We were served a horrendously overcooked artichoke and then something called surulettos (Puerto Rico), fried sticks of cornmeal batter reminiscent of corn dogs sans the dogs.

It was a major surprise when entrees turned out to be a hit. Curried lamb (Jamaica) is a terrific stew of lean, meaty braised lamb in chunks, in a complex and rich brown curry sauce. Twelve clove garlic chicken (Haiti) is sauteed white meat with abundant garlic on a bed of fluffy saffron rice. Even the simple black beans and rice (Puerto Rico) have a flavorsome flair.

They were out of desserts the night we dropped by, even out of the famous Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee advertised on the menu. So we just had more margaritas and Calypso music, a sure-fire recipe for success.

* Calypso’s Bar and Grill, 139 E. Ojai Ave., Ojai. (805) 640-8001. Food served 11 a.m.-10 p.m. daily. Dinner for two, $24-$39.