East End Eats: Le Chef

Le Chef, a warm and professional restaurant at the foot of Job's Lane in Southampton, has an interesting way of handling dinner prices.

The prix fixe dinner, which includes an appetizer, entree, and dessert, is $18.95. This includes choices from about half the items listed. Thereafter, if you want to make different selections, price increments are indicated.

For example, if you want a salmon and crab cake for an appetizer it will cost you $2 extra, as will filet of beef Bearnaise or duck as an entree. Rather than offering a restricted prix fixe menu and a separate a la carte menu, this is a refreshingly logical way of laying out the options.

Pate And Snails

The meal got off to a good start. The service was fast and charming, the bread was good, and, in a nice touch that is probably seldom noticed, the butter was top grade. Handsome quantities of Beaujolais Nouveau were consumed without deleterious effects.

We tried a refreshing Caesar salad, crisp and sharp and not cloyingly overdressed as it sometimes is. The pate de canard was terrific, rustically coarse and aromatic and studded with crunchy pistachio nuts. The snails in garlic butter were even better, with each chewy gastropod floating in a deep well of melted savory butter that just had to be soaked up with bread and eaten, and to hell with the latest New York Times bad-fat survey.

A Change Of Mood

But the qualities of the lobster bisque, at an extra $3, can best be estimated by saying that its recipient, who had arrived at dinner gloom-ridden and miserable, was cracking jokes and calling for more Beaujolais by the time she had finished it.

The chosen entrees also received a unanimous vote of confidence. The fish of the day was swordfish and both it and the grilled tuna with black and green peppercorn sauce were perfectly cooked with lovely sauces.

Faith In Poultry Restored

The filet of beef with a Bearnaise sauce was tender and heartwarmingly rich and comforting. But perhaps the entree we liked the best was one that usually ranks pretty low on most people's eating-out-in-a-restaurant list - chicken scallopini Fran‡aise. Don't groan at the thought of a chicken breast; this tender fillet will restore your faith in all things poultry.

The menu states that entrees arrive with either rice or potatoes and a vegetable, but actually they came with an imaginative choice of three different vegetables.

Having taken the lead in an excellent race all through the appetizers and entrees, when it came to dessert time, Le Chef hit the wall.

Some Disappointments

With the exception of the creme caramel, which was fine, those we tried were disappointing. The chocolate mousse cake was dense and heavy and had no cake, the apple pie wasn't like mother's, and the crepes, filled with ice cream and covered with strawberries and sickly chocolate sauce, were depressing shadows of the real thing.

The restaurant makes 70 percent of its desserts, so perhaps we picked the 30 percent that came from elsewhere - after the high quality of everything that had gone before, we were expecting better. But our faith was restored by the excellent coffee that followed.

All in all, Le Chef has to be highly recommended both for fine cooking and good value.