Ravenna bistro disappoints — in two tongues

Leaving the pouring rain behind, two women enter a small candlelit lounge where a couple sip cocktails and eat dessert at the bar. At a tiny table, another pair nibble Spanish cheeses. French pop music fills the air. The women are hungry, and this place looks perfect for a late-evening bite.

Their timing, unfortunately, is off. It's just past 8:30 p.m. when a waiter tells them, "Sorry, we're closed."

Closing earlier than advertised on a slow night is only a venial sin, but Bistro Magnolia — a French-bistro-cum-tapas-bar open in Ravenna since October — commits far greater offenses. It promises too much and delivers too little, at prices that skew higher than they should for a casual neighborhood dining spot.

Consider the "salmon in parchment paper" ($19.50) ordered in the bistro after our waitress — rolling her eyes — recited a litany of items missing-in-action. "But the chef just went out and bought some salmon," she said. Sold! I replied, envisioning him at the fish counter at nearby Whole Foods.

It was my turn to roll my eyes when presented with an aluminum-foil pouch holding the tail-end of a flavorless piece of fish, overcooked and hard to find under a haystack of carrots and zucchini.

Fortunately, we'd also ordered an excellent steak frites ($23) and I brandished my steak knife to show my companion how to puncture and pull open her salmon package: something the server failed to do.

The shell steak, one of three cuts of beef offered on the bistro menu, proved to be the kitchen's strong suit. Like the chateau-

briand with its creamy, cognac-laced peppercorn sauce ($25), this rib-eye was cooked precisely as ordered. "Moroccan butter" added gloss, color and spice, the latter echoed in the accompanying cone of fries.

Crisp frog legs, batter-dipped and lightly fried, are pleasantly lemony and fun to eat (just grab the little drumstick), though their sauce gribiche is far from the classic made with chopped egg: This resembled tartar sauce. A salad of scarlet beets, mâche and crumbled Roquefort was another lemon-stoked delight.

But low points outweighed the high points. Spinach and (unripened) avocado salad is overdressed, underflavored and pricey at $9. Galette de Brie, described as a cheese and onion tart, is a tossed salad wearing a tepid biscuit stuffed with not much cheese or onion.

Moules Marinieres ($8.50) took beautiful Mediterranean mussels and sullied them with an undistinguished broth. For once, I didn't want to dredge bread in the sauce. But then, the cheap French bread served here isn't much of a temptation either. Unfortunately, it shows up a lot.

Heavily oiled and baked into toasts, the bread accompanies brandade de morue — a clunky version of the Provençal salt-cod spread. And I longed for something more rustic to pair with the generous array of charcuterie (including glorious duck rillettes) and cheeses (French or Spanish).

Inventory management is a constant problem. Once they were out of all the French cheeses, another night many of the seafood dishes. Finding out that a lemon tart had been eighty-sixed one busy evening, we chose instead a soggy, inedible "tarte tatin" whose apples cried out for the caramel that defines this French pastry.

Servers are quick to refill water glasses but routinely neglect to offer cocktails, another glass of wine or a coffee. You'll likely go begging for silverware, too.

Chef/owner Matias Delsart is a native of Buenos Aires whose ancestry is Spanish, Italian and French-Basque, which helps explains his restaurant's dual personality. His tapas menu is available only in the bar. Make that "at the bar" — as I was told when I was seated in the sultry, Revlon-red lounge, a space I prefer to the adjacent buttercup-yellow dining room hung with homey oil paintings.

It's puzzling why the lengthy tapas menu ($4-$15) would be limited to just a handful of bar seats, though I was granted dispensation one slow night: the very night those two hungry women were left out in the rain.

If my tapas choices were any indication, they didn't miss much.

Wilted spinach with garlic, pine nuts and desiccated currants needed salt. Gambas al ajillo (a quartet of "spicy" shrimp) wanted for potent garlic and more than one chile. Almejas kim chee — clams, steamed with lemon and garlic — lacked the promised ginger. And then there was the "famous Iberian ham" doing a good imitation of Boar's Head, served (oy vey, caramba!) on those oily little toasts.

Nancy Leson: 206-464-8838 or taste@seattletimes.com. More columns at www.seattletimes.com/nancyleson.

Sample menu

Frog legs $9

Beet salad $7.50

Chicken breast with garlic sauce $17

Steak frites $23

Cheese plate $10

Chocolate mousse $6