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Le Lion d'Or

By Phyllis C. Richman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 2, 1997

I'd been planning to review Washington's newest extravagant French restaurant, Lespinasse, but it was closed. I postponed my visit until the following Monday, only to find it remaining closed for another week.

Enough of ringing in the new. I decided to start 1997 with a return to tradition, so I paid a visit to Le Lion d'Or. Le Lion d'Or was the Lespinasse of the '70s: then our grandest, most expensive French restaurant. It had the advantage of being chef-owned and home-grown, while Lespinasse is a New York spinoff. Lespinasse chef Gray Kunz delegated his sous chef to run the kitchen in the provinces.

Le Lion d'Or pays homage to tradition. That's obvious before you even step through the door, where gold letters painted on the glass announce, "Coat and tie required." The owner, Jean-Pierre Goyenvalle, dresses like a diplomat and greets each guest, often by name. These days Goyenvalle spends more time in the dining room than in the kitchen, yet the cooking bears his unmistakable stamp.

Unlike newer restaurants whose menus list a mere dozen or so entrees, Le Lion d'Or has almost a dozen specials alone, recited by the waiter rather than printed on paper. The written menu is as long as a cruise ship's, unbendingly French and terse: "Le homard aux pates fraiches $34"; or "Les cailles roties au foie gras $28."

Regulars don't even look at the menu. Instead, they settle into tufted brown leather banquettes under a tented ceiling of gold-striped silk, sipping champagne cocktails and devoting themselves to the wine list. The flimsy lists found at most restaurants pale beside this lengthy leather-bound volume. And unlike the menu, it is full of bargains, albeit expensive ones (some of the wines were bought a decade or more ago). The wine service has old-world finesse, although one hapless diner who brought along a special bottle was told in no uncertain terms that not even a corkage fee would buy permission to open it.

Le Lion d'Or's glory days are in the past. Once reservations were necessary many days in advance and the dining room was crowded with captains, waiters and busboys; now the restaurant has something of a museum quality. But the remaining staff is as experienced as one can find in this country: Many of those working in the kitchen have been with Goyenvalle for 30 years, following him from two of Washington's legendary French restaurants, Jean-Pierre and Rive Gauche. This is a place that cares little for change -- Goyenvalle doesn't even have a computer. But he's had to, well, adjust. Last month, for the first time, he added English translations to the menu. He keeps jackets on hand for patrons who haven't dressed in accordance with the house rule. And he has added a few light, modern dishes -- although, given the rest of this sumptuous menu, I wouldn't choose them.

For me, the choices this season are easy: anything from the sea, anything baked in a pastry crust, anything sauced with beurre blanc. That means I'd begin with les crepes de mais aux huitres et caviar, three tiny corn pancakes, each topped with a warmed belon oyster, a soft white butter sauce and a dollop of caviar. Or maybe I'd get crab cakes, here combined with lobster meat and pink roe, flatter and more mousse-like than the American version, with lacy crisp edges and a light topping of diced tomatoes and fungi. Among the other seafood appetizers, the lobster souffle is too silky and slick for me, and the lobster navarin is so rich that it does me in before I've gotten to the entrees. The appetizer list is also weighty with foie gras dishes -- at least half a dozen. How about pate? Snails? They're all available. But none I've tasted could compare with the seafood except quail en croute. The puff pastry crust is flaky, dark and oozing butter. The quail, lolling in a winey sauce, is tender from its baking and plump with cooking juices.

Of course, if you've had quail in a crust as a starter, you probably wouldn't be inclined to order fish in a crust for your main course. Yet this frequent special is the single best reason to dine at Le Lion d'Or, particularly if the fish is wild rockfish, stuffed with finely diced vegetables. The pastry wrapper -- artistically shaped as a fish, with scales etched in the dough -- seals in the juices as the fish cooks. At the table, the waiter reserves the fish-shaped top crust to decorate your plate, then lifts the fillets from their soggy bottom crust, arranges them on the plate, ladles on that delicate yet shamelessly rich butter sauce -- and leaves more on the table to tempt you.

And there's more: Lobster with sweetbreads and white grapes in a buttery sauternes sauce is a dazzling interplay of moist, tender lobster with floured sweetbreads that offer both crisp surface and milky-soft interior. The pheasant is cooked simply, lightly moistened with a fine truffled brown sauce. The menu lists the inevitable rack of lamb and chateaubriand, but more interesting options are squab, quail and venison. The disappointments are not particularly serious -- an oversalted sauce on the truffle-and-foie-gras noodles, a flat tomato sauce with the tuna, guinea hen that's a bit stringy or squab that's flabby and leached of its juices from being sliced too thin. They're balanced by sauces that taste of painstaking simmering, skimming and reduction and that let the meats and fish display their natural flavors.

The restaurant's main problem is a matter of value. A $16 appetizer isn't easily forgiven for excess salt, and a $28 game bird should be exquisite (particularly since most entrees are bare, with vegetables available a la carte).

For dessert, think hot. The cart of pastries is as beautiful as any Parisian pastry-shop window, but the magnificent finales here are those desserts you order ahead because they are cooked a la minute. The chocolate souffle leaves you wondering how something so light and airy could have such intense chocolate flavor. And an apricot crepe is an explosion of apricot flavor gentled by the crepe and by the foamy custard sauce that surrounds it.

Dessert is followed by a tray of sweets: puff pastry pigs' ears, thin curved tuiles, butter cookies, sugared nuts and chocolate truffles. They're the same array that's been served after dinner for decades. And therein lies both Le Lion d'Or's strength and its weakness.

Hours of Operation and Prices
Dinner: Monday through Saturday 6 to 10 p.m.
Closed Sunday
Appetizers $7.50 to $38; Entrees $25 to $36.
Full dinner with wine, tax and tip $60 to $100 per person.

Other Information
• American Express, Carte Blanche, Diners Club, Visa, MasterCard
• Reservations required
• Smoking section