Chef at Bernard’O Is Home at the Range

If your name is Bernard and you decide to open a restaurant in Rancho Bernardo, it seems not unreasonable to name the place Bernard’O.

It helps to be French (even though the name sounds like a cross between Spanish and Irish), because Rancho Bernardo always has had a certain bent for this cuisine. Restaurateur Bernard Mougel, as a native of the French province of Lorraine, can feel at home on this count; he also should feel quite at home in the neighborhood, since he has worked off and on for 15 years at the Rancho Bernardo Inn, most recently as director of food and beverage services.

Mougel chose a spacious storefront location in Rancho Bernardo’s oldest corner shopping center, and has made the place comfortable enough by installing spacious banquettes, lightly-colored murals and--a rarity in inland North County, where temperatures sometimes soar well above the comfort level--an outdoor dining area on the sidewalk. As it happened, all of these tables were full on a recent overly warm evening.

Bernard’O is fairly low-key and casual (no-one seems to dress up for the place), but even so, diners will find French restaurant traditions at operation on a high level, much higher, in fact, than at all but the barest handful of San Diego County establishments. Mougel remains in the dining room through the evening, constantly roving from table to table and frequently dropping by the kitchen window to examine preparations and keep production flowing. And the service is nothing short of impressive; the staff is youthful but well-trained, eager to please and more than competent. That an unpretentious restaurant can offer service of this quality should be a lesson to many, many of the area’s restaurateurs, who frequently make us tug at our locks in frustration by providing untrained servers barely capable of writing an order.

Another Rancho Bernardo Inn alumnus, Jeff Greenfield, rules the kitchen; after serving as saucier at the hotel’s luxury El Bizcocho room, he moved on to two year’s service under Martin Woesle at Rancho Santa Fe’s Mille Fleurs, and then moved down the block to take control of the ranges at the competing Delicias. He has been at the helm at Bernard’O since the restaurant opened earlier this summer.

Greenfield’s menu is French, updated to a degree and embroidered with the hot items of the moment, designer pizzas and pastas. A few of the tricks he learned at Delicias show up at Bernard’O, notably the grilled boneless chicken with marjoram and natural juices, and pizzas so fanciful that they run to combinations like grilled chicken with black beans, white corn and cilantro, and Belgian endive with goat cheese. But there also is sauteed beef filet with Madeira sauce, crocks of traditional French onion soup (a local favorite that many local eateries now find too lacking in cachet to offer) and a simple but most attractive salad of sliced tomatoes, spicy fresh basil and home-made mozzarella. This same cheese, smooth and creamy, melts into soft puddles on the pizzas.

Daily specials supplement the menu, including a ravioli of the day that, recently, allowed Greenfield to show off. Shaped amusingly like parallelograms rather than the usual squares, the packages of fresh pasta enclosed a most interesting filling of salmon mousse studded with a fine dice of ahi tuna. The sauce, French rather than Italian, was a wow, and blended tart beurre blanc (creamy butter sauce) with a second, more pungent beurre blanc flavored with red wine vinegar. A sprinkling of minced fresh chives brought the dish together.

The spinach salad also is clever, thanks to the garnish of a fat slice of goat cheese and small cakes of hot-from-the-pan hashed brown potatoes. The leaves were coarse and tough, however, and insufficiently moistened with dressing.

Greenfield serves osso buco every Saturday, and the dish of braised veal shanks in a light wine sauce has become so popular that many guests call ahead to reserve portions. This is done quite nicely and served more than generously. Also nice, and available daily, the duck leg confit rests plumply on a mound of risotto flavored with red wine and shallots. The vegetable garnishes are of the tender-crisp school and quite pleasing.

Samples of the dessert selections are displayed in the entry, and it is well to save room for one of these sweets. The pear-stuffed crepe is delicate but rich thanks to a generous ladle of warm caramel sauce, and the creme brulee is voluptuously smooth under its crackling, glass-like lid of caramelized brown sugar.

BERNARD’O

12457 Rancho Bernardo Rd. Rancho Bernardo

Calls: 487-7171

Hours: Lunch Tuesday-Friday, dinner Tuesday-Sunday, closed Monday

Cost: Cost: Pastas and entrees $6.25 to $14; dinner for two, including a glass of wine each, tax and tip, about $25 to $65