Chef Oudin's menu features such sophisticated dishes as smoked salmon two ways (marinated with fennel and stuffed with crab mousse), lobster bisque with quenelles flavored with brandy, court-bouillon-steamed salmon with blanquette of shrimp and scallops.
There are no Latin or Caribbean ingredients on Pascal Oudin's menu these days. No Manchego cheese polenta or tropical tiramisu of days gone by.
The French-born chef who won national acclaim at the Grand Bay Hotel five years ago for his European interpretations of then-trendy New World cuisine is at long last doing his own food his own way in his own place.
``My goal is to bring back French food,'' says Oudin, who opened Pascal's on Ponce in Coral Gables in late July with his wife and business partner, Ann-Louise. ``This is a lot about what I did at the Grand Bay but simplified - cleaner, and no tropical ingredients. . . . Those products can be worked with, but I want to use what I've been taught and still be in America.''
So crab cakes, a decidedly American creation, are bound with a shrimp custard like the one he learned to make as an apprentice chef in France, and are served in a pool of beurre blanc flavored with roasted red pepper.
Oudin's menu also features such sophisticated dishes as smoked salmon two ways (marinated with fennel and stuffed with crab mousse), lobster bisque with quenelles flavored with brandy, court-bouillon-steamed salmon with blanquette of shrimp and scallops and bittersweet chocolate souffle with chocolate ganache.
His contemporary French cuisine and relatively moderate prices (the most expensive entrees are $21) would seem to be a winning formula, even in the slow, September pre-season. Calls early last week to A-list South Florida restaurants turned up prime-time Saturday night reservations at Chef Allen's, Norman's, Mark's (Las Olas and South Beach), Nemo and Wish, but nothing at Pascal's between 6 and 10:30 p.m.
Simple capacity is no doubt a factor; Pascal's (in the former Thoa's and The Bistro space at 2611 Ponce de Leon Blvd.) can seat only 55, including a few sidewalk tables.
But Simone Diament, editor of the monthly South Florida Gourmet, thinks that the highly regarded Oudin has found his niche in a sparse Coral Gables French restaurant scene dominated by the bistro Les Halles, the old-fashioned Le Provencal and the pricey Palm D'Or at the Biltmore Hotel. ``He has maintained a level of excellence that is really rare,'' Diament said. ``He appeals to business people at lunch and to the crowd that doesn't want to go all the way to South Beach to dine or to the Biltmore to spend a large amount of money. . . . I think his time has come, and he's going to do really, really well.
``You can count on quality all the time. . . . His wife is working with him, and it's very personal, a personal challenge - a matter of proving himself and showing what he can really do.''
Oudin, 40, forged his local reputation at the Grand Bay's Grand Cafe (now Bice), winning plaudits from Esquire (best new Florida chef) and Food & Wine magazine (a Top-10 new U.S. chef) in 1995 for his tropically tinged cuisine.
``People wanted to see yuca and mango and all kinds of fish from the islands, and I had to keep up with the program,'' he says today.
Oudin, who began his culinary training at 13 in Moulin, France, came to the States in 1982 for a short-lived restaurant job in Williamsburg, Va. He moved on to Washington, D.C., and arrived at the Grand Bay after stints at the now-defunct Dominique's and the Aragon Cafe in Miami Beach and a three-year sojourn back in France creating American restaurant concepts for Euro Disney. He left the Grand Bay after an ownership change in 1998, signing on with Brad Weiser of theTango Group to develop Sweet Donna's, with its $15 chicken pot pie and $9 meatloaf sandwich. The Shoppes at Sunset Place restaurant, conceived as a prototype for an upscale, down-home chain, closed in July after 15 months.
``It was a bad story, a bad dream. It cost a lot of money to the owners, but it was a great experience,'' says Oudin, who left last November after it became clear the concept wouldn't fly. Not long after, a friend told him the space on Ponce was coming on the market.
``I've been looking to open a restaurant for 10 years, and talking about it,'' he says. ``The time is never right, but you've got to make it right. I sat down with my wife. We put everything we own into it - our savings, the kids' college money, I grabbed it all.''
His brother Jean Marc came from France to pitch in on ``the rubbing, the scrubbing, the demolition,'' and stayed on as maitre d'.
Oudin's Swedish-born wife helps in the front of the house and keeps a handle on the business side as well as on the couple's son and daughter, ages 8 and 12.
The spare, clean space is accented by a single peach-colored wall and supported by a tiny kitchen that's ``one-quarter the size it should be,'' Oudin says. Small, terra cotta pots of rosemary and garlic chives adorn the white-clothed tables, which are sheathed with white paper at lunch. Since the doors opened July 28, response has been literally staggering, says Oudin, his gray-green eyes red with fatigue and his already-slender frame 10 pounds lighter from the stress. ``My next step is to control, to stabilize the business,'' he says.
After packing in as may as 90 at lunch and 110 at dinner, he says, they're limiting seating to 60 or 70 at lunch and 80 at dinner for the time being.
``I'm discovering now what I can do in this space. Maybe I'm doing to much,'' he says with a weary smile.
``But Miami is ready for a restaurant like this. It's a beautiful thing.''
