RESTAURANTS : Dining at the Irvine Hilton: Not Much Between the Salads and Desserts

IRVINE — Hilton International is making a widespread effort to keep up with the times in a majority of its hotel restaurants. At Morell’s in the Irvine Hilton, for instance, the wine list is stocked with designer labels (Newton, Heitz, Jordan), and the menu features designer entrees (Muscovy duck breast, Maine lobster, free-range chicken), all cooked in ways that look simple and inviting.

But while some of the cooking is first-rate, many dishes are diminished by overblown presentation and underwhelming flavors--just the stereotype that most hotel restaurants would like to shake. I enjoy as much as anyone the spectacle of a tuxedoed waiter pulling a silver cloche from a plate, but the thrill fades quickly when the prime rib or lamb you’ve been presented is several shades less pink than expected.

The dining room is the right shade of pink, at least. Soaring plants nearly reach the high ceiling, and on the white cloth-covered tables are lovely orchids, flowered crockery and delicate crystal. It’s as quietly elegant as the faint ripple of the distant keyboard that sounds out ever so discreetly during meals here.

But the quiet is exaggerated--to the point where it is possible to eavesdrop on practically any table in the restaurant. The loudest noise one hears all evening is the squeak of the dessert trolley.

The mood of calm at our table was disrupted, however, whenever wine was ordered. I had to send back two bottles my first visit and two more on my second when the vintages printed on the list did not correspond with the available selections. This comedy of errors turned the simple act of ordering wine into a rather protracted exercise, with wines unpoured until well into the first courses. That’s not the way it’s done at hotel school.

Appetizers are one of the kitchen’s strong suits. The best of them is an extra-rich melange of sweetbreads, wild mushrooms and artichokes in a ragout with heavy cream. Two forkfuls ought to satisfy. The lobster bisque is even richer. For something lighter, try the cured salmon with dill; it goes only slightly overboard with a hard-to-resist, caviar-filled brioche served alongside. It’s a delightful combination.

As one might expect of an elegant hotel restaurant, Morell’s mixes its salads tableside. Such showiness is often silly, but in this restaurant the salads deserve the full treatment. Humble mixed greens rise to great heights with a variety of good lettuces and a creamy balsamic vinaigrette. The Caesar is equally impressive, a two-egg-yolk version full of garlic and anchovies. Eat them with gusto; things do not get better from here.

Baked pork chop with chestnut stuffing and Calvados sounds just wonderful, for example, but the dish comes out impossibly sweet. And a dish like fillet of salmon en papillote turns out to be an insipid blanket of overcooked, tasteless vegetables covering a perfectly ordinary piece of poached salmon.

Ahi is cooked perfectly, medium rare, cut into thin strips with a light sesame breading. But then the kitchen takes the dish one step further, adding a cashew beurre blanc that ruins it. A colorful pile of fish (monkfish, sweetwater prawns, scallops), diced vegetables and unspeakably gummy colored pastas is just plain tasteless. Only the simplest dishes have merit: rack of lamb rubbed with herbs and chicken breast with a tomatillo coulis.

Luckily, the hotel has one more ace up its sleeve: that squeaky dessert cart. Desserts at Morell’s are visually spectacular, all plated in a swirl of grandiose sauces, and delicious to boot. Poached pear in filo pastry with mascarpone cream is so good it makes you wonder how a restaurant so unsteady could have hired a dessert maker so skillful. Mocha hazelnut mousse--little boules of mousse stacked up separately on a two-tiered gaufrette of bitter chocolate--is the kind of dessert one expects in New York or Paris, not in a local hotel restaurant. The times, they are a changin’ . . . I hope.

Morell’s is expensive, but not unreasonably so. Appetizers are $5.50 to $7.75. Soups and salads are $4.50 to $6.25. Main dishes are $17 to $28. Desserts are $5. The menu changes weekly.

MORELL’S

Irvine Hilton, 17900 Jamboree Road, Irvine

(714) 863-3111

Open Monday through Saturday for lunch, 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m.; dinner, 6 p.m. to 10 p.m.

All major credit cards accepted.