Horton Park Plaza’s Bistro Helps Give New Life to Historic Building

In the eyes of the larger world 75 years ago, the banking halls of the San Diego Trust & Savings Bank’s then-new headquarters at the corner of 5th Avenue and E Street, though impressive, probably ranked more as a chapel of commerce than as a temple of finance.

After all, in 1913, San Diego was decades away from its reputation as a center of wealth and escalating real estate values.

But the rich fixtures that banks then installed as symbols of financial stability and reliability all were in place, from the intricately tiled floor to the ornately coffered ceilings. One can imagine the orderly scenes that played out during business hours, always dominated from a discreet distance by the bankers wearing stiff collars.

It’s just as well that those responsible men have passed on, because what goes on in that elegant lobby today surely would gray their mustaches. Music now cascades the length of a space that once resonated to nothing louder than the clink of a dropped coin. Cocktails are poured where tellers once dished out cash, and interesting aromas drift from a modern kitchen that most definitely was not part of the original floor plan.

San Diego Trust & Savings long ago moved to its current headquarters on Broadway and over the years its 10-story former headquarters had many incarnations. For several decades it was home to Roberts clothing store and its upper floors housed dentists and lawyers. In more recent years, it was called the Jeweler’s Exchange, housing offices of gem dealers and jewelers.

Now a grand new life has been given to San Diego’s first high-rise, just in time for its diamond anniversary. The carefully remodeled building has opened as the Horton Park Plaza Hotel, and the one-time bank premises, which include a mezzanine reached by a fine, formal staircase, have been reincarnated as the Fifth Avenue Bistro.

Word has come in from all sides recently that a trip to the Fifth Avenue Bistro should be made a top priority because, in the collective phrase, the place “is so San Francisco.” Its designers do seem to have borrowed ideas from that city’s sophisticated eateries, but they had excellent raw materials with which to begin the work.

The setting is lively and cosmopolitan, thanks in part to a pianist and bassist who evidently delight in playing old favorites as they were meant to be played. The mood in the mezzanine takes on a more formal air (waiters here wear dressy white mess jackets instead of the long aprons and rolled sleeves affected by the fellows downstairs), but even though this handsomely draped and decorated balcony is somewhat removed from the hubbub, the jazz still bubbles up irrepressibly and prompts the most sedate toes to tap.

The menu counterpoints the other-era feel of the place by adopting an almost militantly modern tone. Chef William Henley, formerly of the Westgate Hotel, supervises a kitchen that according to hotel literature prepares a “West Coast regionally oriented style of food” that combines “American, Continental and contemporary California cuisine.” The emphasis in fact is greatly on the last, with American food represented primarily by the oyster Rockefeller and shrimp cocktail appetizers, and the Continent bowing in with the veal piccata and Dover sole meuniere entrees.

This is a fairly appealing menu, and one that seems quite in step with the trend of offering both informal and formal meals at corresponding prices. The pastas and pizzas that have swept both chic and pedestrian American menus are well-represented, along with jazzy California salads (no sprouts, heaven be praised!), various seafoods, a roast duck in red currant and Curacao sauce, and the requisite steaks.

The French touch of enriching dishes with butter or cream seems to have been resolutely banished, although the kitchen does take rather a French tone with presentations at times. The preparation generally is good, but no better than that.

The dishes do use local or West Coast products whenever possible. Thus the appetizer list includes a bay shrimp salad with papaya and avocado, a ceviche of salmon and sea scallops, and smoked Columbia River salmon with the usual garnishes of capers, red onion and cream cheese. Lentil soup is localized by the addition of black beans and cilantro, and the salads rely on tender local greens. Two of these were sampled and admired, a spinach salad tossed with bacon, pine nuts, chopped egg and cucumbers in a smooth lemon-garlic dressing, and a more formal arrangement of radicchio , bibb lettuce and Belgian endive in a pleasantly musky walnut oil vinaigrette.

Both pastas and pizzas can double as entrees or shared appetizers. A pasta that interestingly approximated the effect of pesto , the tangy Genoese sauce of pounded basil and other aromatic ingredients, tossed basil-flavored fettuccine with bits of chicken, toasted pine nuts, olive oil, Parmesan cheese and garlic. The effect was savory but light.

The pizza list includes one of mixed seafood and another called “roasted garlic chicken” (one suspects that the birds that contribute to the basil pasta are expected to do double duty), and an all-vegetable model that made a happy shared first course. Based on a crisp, whole-wheat crust brushed with a little tomato sauce and sprinkled cautiously with mozzarella cheese, this one included rich artichoke hearts, full-flavored enoki and shiitake mushrooms, and a sprinkling of capers for a piquant finish.

The formal and relatively expensive entree list starts disarmingly enough with a grilled, marinated chicken breast but moves right along to sea bass dressed with capers, olives, tomatoes and herbs, and Chardonnay-poached scallops in a green onion-wild mushroom sauce.

Even though seafood dominates the list, the kitchen seems to turn in a better performance with the meats, at least as evidenced by a glamorous pair of grilled lamb chops that arrived escorted by a ramekin of mint-scented meat juices. The red potatoes cleverly carved to resemble mushrooms that accompanied this and some other entrees delighted the eye, but were utterly unseasoned and a little underdone to boot. It’s back to the drawing board on this one.

The Dover sole did extremely well in the presentation department, having been carefully separated into filets and then dusted with minced lemon pulp and parsley. But the fish somehow was tough--this does not seem possible, at least in the case of sole--and therefore disagreeable. It may be that this individual specimen had led a long and dissolute life, or it may be that it got slapped around in the kitchen.

An intriguing presentation of large shrimp was marred by an overly thickened sauce. Splashed with Pernod and joined in the saute pan by meaty wild mushrooms, the shrimp enjoyed a rather pleasant fate until they met this sauce, a rare instance of cream on the menu but one that was overdosed with flour or other thickening. A bed of saffron rice finished what would have been an excellent dish had it been prepared with a lighter hand.

The dinner menu goes off at 10 p.m., but the kitchen remains open until midnight to prepare an after-theater list of snacks, salads, sandwiches and light entrees. A late crowd poured in last Friday to taste some of these offerings, and it seemed suitably impressed with this supposed San Francisco impersonator; if the Gaslamp Quarter finds itself host to another place or two of this type, we may find ourselves saying that these restaurants must be visited because they are “ so San Diego.”

FIFTH AVENUE BISTRO

Horton Park Plaza Hotel, 901 5th Ave.

231-0055

Breakfast, lunch and dinner daily.

Credit cards accepted.

Dinner for two with a glass of wine each, tax and tip, $25 to $75.