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Friday, March 01, 2002

By Mackenzie Carpenter, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

Cafe Du Jour is a work in progress.

Dan Robinson and Paul Krawiec try to emulate the eclectic cuisines of San Francisco restaurants at Cafe Du Jour. (Andy Starnes, Post-Gazette)

It's about two-thirds where it should be -- a cozy, intimate bistro featuring European-style yet hearty, homey cooking at moderate-to-outright-cheap prices.

But it's not there yet. The food is a jumble of the excellent and mediocre; the service a cross between solicitous and absent-minded; the atmosphere almost beguiling and romantic except for the huge '70s-era mural, left over from a previous tenant, of Roberto Clemente and Three Rivers Stadium.

After opening in October on the South Side in the space once occupied by Organic Roots, a delicatessen, the then-chef/proprietor James Rich described his vision of Cafe Du Jour: French-influenced bistro style, featuring such classics as cassoulet with duck sausage and baked brie with apples and wine-cured hard sausage.

And indeed, those dishes, along with some seriously hefty yet sophisticated sandwiches at lunch (cranberry apple sausage with brie on a baguette, for example), have brought some steady foot traffic into the tiny storefront eatery.

But in January, Rich, citing health reasons, sold the place to two other chefs who worked there, Paul Krawiec and Dan Robinson. His menu remains, but it's still too early to tell where his successors plan to go.

Krawiec, a 26-year-old native of San Francisco and graduate of Berkeley, is self-taught as a chef. Maybe some of Berkeley's karma has rubbed off on him, home as it is to the fabled Chez Panisse, a culinary mecca for foodies and one of the first restaurants to emphasize the freshest local ingredients in simple, French-Provencal-inspired cuisine?

Sure, he says, but "There are hundreds of other restaurants around San Francisco besides Chez Panisse, with eclectic cuisines from different nationalities, and they're not as expensive."

Krawiec would like to emulate them, but it may be tougher in Southwestern Pennsylvania, which doesn't have the vast inventory of local produce and farmers' markets -- at least not yet -- as in Northern California.

For now, though, Krawiec and Robinson are doing their best, greeting customers as they cook dinner behind a tall counter, as wonderful smells waft through the air.

The portobello soup is a strong starter -- not a creamy version, but a dark, woodsy broth scented with sherry, featuring delicately tangled slices of the mushroom (while a second soup of the day is listed on the menu, both times we visited they had run out -- even though it was early in the evening).

The salads were excellent, too -- the greens so fresh they practically bounced off the plate, one night featuring a fig and port dressing punctuated with the crunch of toasted walnuts. Another night the greens, dressed in roasted garlic balsamic vinegar and olive oil, were flecked with pieces of ultra-strong Saga bleu cheese.

The appetizers, or "small plates," included a baked brie dish ($7), featuring an individual cheese surrounded with sliced toasted French bread and apples. It is a standout, although the night we ordered it, the Rosette de Lyon wine-cured sausage accompanying it was unavailable. The chicken sausage made a savory substitute.

One portobello mushroom "small plate," stuffed with chevre and topped with red pepper puree, looked tempting but I opted for the other portobello, stuffed with melted cheese and crabmeat ($7). That was a mistake -- the crabmeat was lukewarm, with a fishy taste (Krawiec says he's discontinuing that dish).

In fact, food temperatures are a problem here, given that it's a small kitchen trying to choreograph dishes for 22 diners at peak capacity. While the crab was disconcertingly tepid, the soup and the cassoulet came blazing hot, requiring long minutes of blowing and stirring to cool it. Nonetheless, once edible, the cassoulet ($12) was delicious.

This is not your Julia Child version -- a three-day affair comprising any number of cooked meats including preserved goose -- but a simpler substitute of white beans, bay leaf, onion, garlic, shallots and smoked duck sausage baked with pecorino-romano cheese and an herbed breadcrumb topping.

Chicken Rachel, stuffed with fresh mozzarella, sun-dried tomatoes and basil, looked a little wizened sitting atop a bland pile of basmati rice.It was slightly dry, as boneless chicken often is, but the filling was moist and pungent. The night my husband ordered the shrimp and scallops ($13), the scallops were unavailable, so they gave him more shrimp, also served on herbed basmati rice and sauteed in a lemon-butter white wine sauce.

He would have liked to have seen a little more sauce with the dish, and I, having sampled it, would have liked to have experienced more layers of flavor than just butter and parsley, but the shrimp was cooked perfectly.

Not so the thick boneless pork chop ($12), stuffed with garlic and herbs, and drizzled with a cranberry-citrus coulis, which was a disappointment: tough and chewy.

Again, given the precise timing needed to cook pork chops, it's possible that an overtaxed kitchen may have missed by a minute or so. The coulis, too, seemed overly sweet, without much complexity, more like a separate condiment than a sauce enhancing the flavors of the meat.

For vegetarians, there's a stir-fry of portobello and button mushrooms in a tofu-sesame sauce over the same basmati rice, and for red meat lovers, there's a 14-ounce New York Strip steak with red pepper, carrot and pearl onions sauteed in a Burgundy red-pepper sauce.

Desserts are mostly from out of house; one night there was a choice of two cheesecakes, both of which were unexceptional. A second visit provided a tiramisu tart, an outstanding key lime pie, which was fresh-tasting and creamy, flecked with lime peel -- and an in-house concoction, pears poached with wine, accompanied with a raspberry creme anglaise.

There's a lot of potential at Cafe Du Jour. Its service ranges from almost overeager -- a female waitperson became so enthusiastic at describing the food you feared the other customers would be kept waiting -- to vague, with a young male waiter, on another visit, unable to describe anything about how the dishes were prepared.

At these prices, however, it's easy to be forgiving. And Cafe Du Jour is a welcome relief from the test-marketed, "themed," restaurants breaking out all over. While it obviously lacks the kind of heavy capitalization of those establishments -- Cafe Du Jour can only take cash at this time, not even debit cards -- it's clear that its owners are in it for the right reasons.

Cafe Du Jour
1107 E. Carson St.,
South Side
412-488-9695

Hours: Lunch only, 11:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Monday and Tuesday; lunch and dinner, 11:30 to 10 p.m. all other days. Closed Sunday (although a Sunday brunch and live music on back terrace will be offered in warm weather).

The basics: Appetizers range in price from $6 to $8; Entrees range from $11 to $15; desserts are $4; BYOB, with $2 per wine glass fee, or if customer brings own stemware, a $2 fee for whole table; wheelchair accessible; no smoking; cash only -- no credit cards, or, for the moment, debit cards. Takeout and catering available.

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