Pinot Provence in Costa Mesa always ranks high on my list of fine dining restaurants.
It’s a blessing for Orange County to have an extraordinary chef, Florent Marneau, who has kept the French menu authentic while managing to make his dishes jump off the menu.
Sometimes restaurant menus have lots of items that sound good when you have a first read, but as you narrow down what you’d actually order, there’s nothing at all that screams out for your palate.
That’s certainly not the case at Pinot Provence,and that’s the restaurant’s greatest draw of all.
Pinot Provence’s menu offers dish after dish that is truly French and sounds so good. And after trying out the new winter menu, I want to order one of everything on each visit.
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Pinot Provence: owners traveled French countryside for decor |
It is wonderful to dine amid the excellent mood that Pinot Provence offers. In this lingering warm weather, we’ve been enjoying the two French garden patios that front the restaurant. They are a bit of perfection,like dining on the terrace of a chateau.
With imported statuary and fountains from the South of France, Pinot Provence has the feel of a European sojourn.
Even though the restaurant is 7 years old, it seems as fresh and inviting as ever with the inside amenities also owing a lot to the operators’ French heritage. Example: A central stone table holding a massive bouquet of fresh flowers came from overseas.
The restaurant’s founders, well-known chef and restaurateur Joachim Splichal and his wife Christine, also wandered through France selecting chandeliers, the old barn boards that became Pinot Provence’s ceiling, the utterly tall and stately doors that mark entrances to separate, private dining spaces, and even a ton or so of limestone blocks that outline the grand arch to the main dining room.
This is an elegantly clad restaurant.
There are staples on the menu that Pinot Provence customers have come to expect. But like the daily specials that take advantage of the best and unexpected ingredients arriving at the chef’s kitchen early in the morning, there are always little nuances, sauces and presentations that vary to keep the seafood, poultry and meats exciting.
The chic main menu for lunch and dinner usually consists of no more than 18 choices.
Lunch features dressier sandwiches than usually are offered in that category and the salads also are tasty works of art. Some lunch entrees also spill over to the evening menu for a la carte selections.
Appetizers on a recent dinner menu included a plate of mixed olives,a staple that offers an assortment of cured olives from around the Mediterranean. They are best enjoyed with a before-dinner drink.
Another must on the regular menu is the most French of salads: baby fris & #233;e atop a ruffle of Bibb lettuce leaves with tiny lardons of crisply cooked pork, topped with a poached egg and a drift of walnut vinaigrette.
Right up there on the sophistication scale was the tuna tartare, marinated in truffle essence. However, the biggest tuna intrigue turned out to be a dish called Tahitian Poisson Cru.
This was a fantastic dish, comprising raw sashimi of tuna, shaved shreds of fresh coconut, a spritz of lime juice and sprigs of cilantro, all piled into a small salad-like presentation. The blend was exotic and a new realization of bright tastes to keep me coming back for more.
Foie gras is ever present; recently it came seared with a mango salsa on the side. A variety of oysters on the half-shell make any beginning auspicious.
Fresh seafood is treated with great respect.
I love the quickly seared Nantucket Island scallops, which turned up with agnolotti (little stuffed pastas beloved in the Piemonte region of Italy) filled with celery root puree.
The brioche-crusted mussels add to their dressiness with the flavor of Pernod, adornments of tomato and citron and the strategically placed toast points.
Atlantic salmon was roasted in such a hot oven that it did the two-texture dance to perfection: crispy on the outside and very juicy and tender within. With a topping of fresh morel mushrooms, it zoomed high on the taste meter.
Frogs legs aren’t always on the menu, but they turned up on a Thursday evening. This dish always beckons to me thanks to childhood memories of eating them. Pinot Provence’s frogs legs always are fresh (frozen ones lose flavor and texture and that would never do here) and in this instance their gentle taste was touched with hints of basil and garlic.
Short ribs have become a favorite meat item on menus all over the place. Florent’s current style calls for them in boneless fashion, slowly braised to rich tenderness with crimini mushrooms making their presence known.
Tagines are stews indigenous to northern Africa, especially Morocco. There was one on a recent menu that turned a Colorado lamb shank into a cumin-scented wonder that surely said there’s more to a lamb shank than osso buco.
One dish I want to try is duck breast with melted leeks. I already can taste the soft creaminess of the leeks that have been simmered to silkiness matched so well with the rich flavor of roasted duck.
I rarely pass up sweetbreads because they aren’t often found on menus and they also hark back to my childhood when European food was such an intensive part of my meals.
I urge you to try the sweetbreads. I swiped the plate clean of every last drop of sauce. The sweetbreads were crisped in a caramelized balsamic super reduction sauce with a bed of soubise (casual puree) of cinnamon flavored shallots and quartered baby artichoke.
Rare roasted Wagyu beef (a highly prized Kobe-style beef), chicken roasted in a cast iron pan with tarragon jus, and pepper steak with classic pommes frites also will probably be on the menu when you settle in for a meal at Pinot Provence.
Many desserts come as a trio of tastes in the same flavor family. Like the rest of the menu, all the desserts beg to be ordered.
One recent evening I had a lemon tart that came as a small round of non sugary lemon cr & #269;me in a flaky crust with cubes of lemon gelatin on one corner of the plate and a small scoop of fresh lemon ice cream on the other.
A chocolate dessert was served to a friend as a dacquoise, a rich little rectangle of stacked meringue crisps layered with chocolate ganache, with a scoop of bittersweet chocolate ice cream and a little wedge of fudge intensity gateau on the plate for extra good measure.
Wines are given the respect they deserve at Pinot Provence. The list is not overbearing, but it is a good read and a palate pleasing taste of wines from Europe, Australia, South America and the U.S.
Since the sprightly Beaujolais Nouveau was just released for this year, why not have a bottle of young and refreshing Monmessin or Georges duboeuf with your upcoming meal?
I particularly like the Monmessin: It is clean and fruity with soft layers of terroir running through it. It’s fun.
Don’t forget that Pinot Provence also is a place to have breakfast on a rather sophisticated level.
Pinot Provence is so French, so lovable and so well put together. It’s a special restaurant with a warm, encompassing demeanor that makes us happy to be there for any reason.
AT A GLANCE: Pinot Provence
Address: 686 Anton Blvd.
(at Westin South Coast Plaza hotel) Costa Mesa
(714) 428-0814
Prices: Appetizers and first courses: lunch $2.95 to $11.50, dinner $8 to $18.95; entrees: lunch $9.25 to $16.50, dinner $17.50 to $33.25; Sunday brunch $14.50 to $35
