Des Jardins' Manzanita offers solid standards

Truckee has become Truckée with the opening of the Ritz Carlton Highland and Manzanita restaurant. Located in the Northstar ski area, the opening of this grand hotel and restaurant by San Francisco's Traci Des Jardins has noticeably raised the swell factor of the area.

The multilevel lobby features a stone fireplace that resembles a massive silo with openings on each side. You can see the mountains from everywhere.

Because it is in a resort environment, Manzanita tries to cover all bases - that is, if you have the cash. With $14 house cocktails, the restaurant probably isn't going to attract struggling students who cut class for a day of skiing. Nor, I suspect, does management really want to.

What the restaurant does want is to appeal to the widest range of affluent tastes. Small children have their own menu; adults who want a snack in the lounge, which is nearly as large as the 94-seat dining room, can nibble on exceptional crab sliders ($14) with caper aioli, a celery root slaw and pickled onions; or duck meatballs ($12), which you'll also find at Jardiniere, Des Jardins' San Francisco restaurant.

Those who want a more conventional meal can dine in the handsome room around a double-sided stone slab fireplace, creating two seating areas. Or, patrons can look out over the casement window to the snow-dusted patio and the slopes beyond. There's also a private room for 25 for larger celebrations and business meetings.

Sleek but woodsy

The entrance to the restaurant, tucked inside the hotel, is set off with a table fashioned from a nearly 400-year-old section of tree trunk. Everywhere you look there are gleaming wine bottles and an impressive kitchen defined by a mirrored canopy etched with manzanita trees aglow from back lighting. These sleek, Vegas-like appointments are successfully mixed with touches of Tahoe woodsy in such elements as the rough ceiling planks with exposed bark.

There's a chef's table for eight, made out of a single tree, next to the kitchen, and a chef's counter with induction burners so that food can be prepared for special prearranged dinners. It's an impressive design, done by the Johnson Studio in Atlanta, the same group that won acclaim for the multi-dining-room experience at Fearings in Dallas.

For her part, Des Jardins seems to have simplified and adapted her cooking to appeal to a somewhat captive resort crowd. Once ensconced in the hotel, most people won't go anywhere else. However, if you stay elsewhere and choose to drive in for lunch or dinner, valet parking is complimentary.

The food is good enough to be a destination, even at lunch where the hamburger ($17) reigns supreme, a thick slab of meat topped with applewood smoked bacon and Gruyere cheese. It's served with fries with tiny blisters on the outside that shatter like potato chips and protect the soft, steaming interior.

While the restaurant is large, the menu at dinner is pared down to eight appetizers and salads and seven main courses, including an obligatory prime rib with baked potato ($38) and New York strip ($39). Then there's rotisserie chicken ($28), pork chop ($32) and red wine-braised short ribs with horseradish potato puree ($29). It may not be imaginative, and Des Jardins repeats dishes she's perfected at Jardiniere, but the cooking is solid, making Manzanita jump to the front of the must-visit Tahoe restaurant list.

Each main course is accompanied by interesting sides - the pork chops are nicely accented with bacon-flavored Brussels sprouts, crushed potatoes and mustard jus; the chicken, practically the size of a small turkey, rests on tiny potatoes, onions and chanterelles.

However, the fish dishes are in sharp contrast to the generously portioned meat dishes: the single filet of petrale sole ($34) on our visit was on a tasting-menu portion of celery root puree, beets and a few mustard greens with a Meyer lemon beurre blanc. It was good but might not satisfy a ski-induced appetite.

Appetizers straight up

Appetizers are also straightforward, including another Des Jardins classic - Traci's bread salad ($14), where warm crisp cubes of bread sauteed in olive oil are tossed with arugula, radicchio, nutty-tasting fried artichokes and soft cubes of Crescenza cheese that modulate the flavors. She also offers her classic diver scallops ($22 starter/$32 entree) with light potato mousseline and black truffle nage, and a beautifully presented albacore tuna crudo ($15) with radishes, tender greens and sea beans. The most interesting dish is the gnocchi ($15/$20) where foraged mushrooms, as fragrant as roses, are accented with winter squash and a buttery sauce.

Desserts (all $9) are as different as night and day. At lunch the apple tart ($9) is classic and delicious, though the house-made apple sorbet didn't have much character, and the warm chocolate cake is distinguished with orange sorbet and chocolate-flavored chantilly cream. At dinner one night a curdled texture and musty flavor made the squash creme brulee inedible, though the accompanying warm madeleines were excellent. The bread pudding was so dry I wondered whether someone had forgotten to pour on the custard, and instead just buttered some toasted stale bread.

I was surprised our waiters didn't say anything when they picked up the nearly untouched desserts, especially because they were otherwise engaging and accommodating. After visiting three times practically back to back, we began to feel like regulars. Part of the allure of a resort of this caliber is the sense of being indulged. That role is aptly handled by the friendly staff and the man in charge - Laurent Vasseur, who previously worked for David Bouley and managed the popular Balthazar in New York.

While staff members are young and still settling in - the restaurant just opened in December - it's clear they have been well trained and any missteps are simply from lack of practice. They know that people are paying lots to dine and stay there, and treat guests accordingly. If the food isn't startlingly inventive, that's a minor quibble.

Michael Bauer is The Chronicle's restaurant critic. E-mail him at mbauer@sfchronicle.com, go to sfgate.com/food to read his blog and previous reviews, and follow him on Twitter at @michaelbauer1.

This article appeared on page L - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle