Everybody’s hurting in this economy except the fortunate few vulture capitalists and hedge traders who got the big tax breaks. But it’s a mighty plunge from a stylish stainless spoon to a grease-stained tin fork. If in better times you learned to love truffles and cabernet, then burgers and tacos and canned beer probably  won’t provide enough pleasure to soothe your frazzled  soul.

Happy-hour grazing at a wine bar with decent eats can be the foodie’s parachute — if not a CEO’s golden parachute, at least one serviceable enough to waft you down easy if your bank balance is blowin’ in the  wind.

A recommendation a few weeks ago from posse newbie Inta sent us to Hillcrest’s Café Bleu, which has replaced the similar Crush. Inta was outta town, so our group consisted of the Lynnester; long, tall Ben-the-Stew; and rejoining us after long exile in a horribly boring Bay Area suburb, the much-missed  Mark.

Despite its name, Bleu is physically a study in red, with unbroken, unornamented dark-red walls, except for the bar area along one side of the front, which is illuminated by twinkling blue lights left over from Crush. It’s a long rectangular room with dark-painted wooden floors and naked wooden tables, and the lack of soft surfaces makes the room a bit echoey, but not so noisy you’d need to shout. Classic jazz plays softly in the  background.

If you’re at leisure to get there early (or if you call to reserve them), you may snag coveted seats at one of two mini-lounges: a big, plush couch near the front, which faces a table and two chairs; and, better yet, a parallel pair of chaise longues at the back, with a small table between them. Asking the waiter to peel you a grape would probably be pushing it. You certainly  wouldn’t ask the waiter we had for that — there was something a touch graceless there, a hint of pressure to order up, eat up, and get out, though nobody was waiting for our  table.

The dark secret about happy hour, our waiter made amply clear, is that you not only have to arrive before 6:00 p.m., but your order has to reach the kitchen by that witching hour or your gown will turn to rags, your eating posse into mice, and you’ll have to pay at least 25 percent more. We barely squeaked  by.

Our choices varied from brilliant to just okay. None were awful, all were fun, and in aggregate we enjoyed our meal hugely — nibbling this, tasting that, gulping the other, while sampling interesting wines from a very smart, mainly affordable list that offers the chance to try most choices in half-glasses.

The appetizer knockout is the wild mushroom vol-au-vent, a buttery, crackling puff-pastry case containing wild mushrooms sautéed with garlic, herbs, and white wine, finished with cream sauce, truffle oil, and Parmesan. What makes the dish is that the mushrooms are really wild. No, they  don’t take their tops off, but they’re not confined to supermarket “wild” varieties like portobello and shiitake. Here, the mixture included a generous portion of costly, succulent fresh cèpes (aka porcini) in long, thin slices. With their deep, suave flavor, these may just be the third-best mushroom variety in the world (after truffles and morels). There were plenty of them to savor in the memorable  tart.

A charcuterie plate (none of it made in-house) also proved satisfying, offering slices of French saucisson sec (like a milder salami) and saucisson a l’ail (garlic sausage) along with deliciously rich rillettes (meat cooked slowly in fat until tender, then shredded), with tasty herbed French-bread croutons, huge, tart caper berries, and coarse-grain mustard. (At sister restaurant Market Street Café and French Bakery in San Marcos, the sausages are made by a local artisan.) We  didn’t try the cheese plate (with honeycomb), but it, too, is clearly a winner: The choices from at least seven international cheeses are listed on a blackboard over the bar, and they’re interesting and a natural for a wine  bar.

An assortment called “Olives, Almonds, and Dates” offers savory marinated green picholine olives, candied Marcona almonds, and Medjool dates stuffed with pecorino cheese and wrapped in applewood bacon. Problem, though, is the bacon was dried out, the dates withered with heat rather than plumped with the stuffing, and the cheese not gooey enough to compensate for the dryness. This  doesn’t compare to the juicy chorizo-Mornay stuffed dates at Whisknladle — it’s more like a suburban hostess’s chic update of  rumaki.

A salad of heirloom tomatoes with Italian water-buffalo mozzarella and prosciutto was rewarding. The garnet-colored tomato slices (perhaps one of those near-black, juicy varieties like Cherokee, or a Russian heirloom like Black Prince) were marinated in garlic and olive oil, served with pale-green chive olive oil and balsamic reduction, and both the cheese and prosciutto were fine. For me, a garnish of cantaloupe and honeydew balls slightly diminished the impact, their simple fruity sweetness stealing the stage from the dark, subtle impact of ripe seasonal  tomatoes.

The corn chowder with lump crab was a disappointment. In late August, we all expected a blast of sun-drenched sweet corn, but the thin colloid was also thin in flavor. It just  wasn’t corny enough. For that matter, it  wasn’t quite crabby enough either, with merely a spoonful of the meat as a garnish in the  center.

An onion tart was also a letdown, given my expectations, although many people like it very much, judging from other reviews and blogs. However, I ordered it imagining something along the lines of André Soltner’s fabled onion tart at New York’s Lutèce — a reputed marvel of rich custard, deeply caramelized sweet onion shreds, and light, buttery pastry. This was more of a schematic diagram: a useless pile of frisée lounged along one side of the plate like a discarded green fright wig, and in the center, some phyllo sheets were topped with lightly caramelized sautéed onions and red pepper strips, surrounded by black niçoise olives and some puffs of pesto. This was less like Lutèce, more like one of those ten-minute recipes that get published in cooking magazines’ “fast and desperate” recipe sections. My friends  didn’t have Soltner’s creation on their minds as I did, but they  didn’t much cotton to this shortcut version  either.

If we’d been intent on eating only from the happy-hour menu, we could have filled up on more substantial starters — fried calamari (which chef Stephen Clickner handles expertly, assuming he’s using the same recipe he did when he was opening chef at Soleil @k a few years ago), sautéed mussels, pepper steak brochettes. And there were more salads to try, too — a Caesar, of course, and particularly, “Salade Bleu,” with an iceberg wedge, bleu-cheese dressing, heirloom tomatoes, and Point Reyes bleu-cheese crumbles.  Couldn’t be  bad.

Had we stayed wholly with happy-hour noshing (before the bell tolled for us at 6:00 p.m.), we could have gotten away for about $25 per person, including beverages. But time ran out, so we moved on to the regular menu for a few more grazes and then a couple of entrées — which included the house masterpiece. This drove up the bill to about $50 each, all told, about the same as at the latest spate of “neighborhood restaurants” I’ve reviewed. (In this case, the extra dishes were necessary because it’s my job to taste a lot of things, and the doggie bags afford helpful scrutiny of the leftovers under the mass spectrometer, aka a bright kitchen light.) You can easily split the price difference, eating the best and skipping the rest. And let me point you to the Sunday supper ritual, an ever-changing three-course prix-fixe meal with several choices for each course, for $25 (plus $17 for matched wines). Sheesh, what a  deal!

Our non-“happy” grazes were a plate of canapés and an ahi tartare. Indeed, both left us somewhat unhappy. I ordered the ahi hoping for something like the visceral roundhouse-right that hit me with this dish at Molly’s a few weeks earlier, where the fish was superb and the dressing drove me to delirium. Here it featured ordinary raw tuna chunks in an unremarkable fusion dressing (sesame, sweet soy, ginger, simple syrup). The canapés, presented on a Gallic triple-tier server, consisted of the “chef’s selection” of bite-size hors d’oeuvres. Six bites, nearly $2 a bite. That night’s selection: two tiny Manila clams, lightly dressed nothingness. Two little baked poufs of lump crab, pleasing. Two tablespoonfuls of duck confit in some very sweet dressing. Nice confit, 86 the sauce. After our dinner, I read somebody else’s review (a respectable pro), noting that the two-way duck entrée (breast and confit) was classic and good, by which I hope the reviewer meant that the skin on the confit was ultra-crisp and the meat moist. (Too often, locally, it’s the opposite, with soggy skin and dry  flesh.)

For entrées, zeroing in on the “Bistro Specialties,” I chose bouillabaisse, just to be mean, since the failure rate on this dish is ridiculously high in San Diego. I probably overemphasize authenticity in my view of this dish, so if you  don’t care, just skim all this stuff. Café Bleu’s version is a minimalist sketch of the Provençale classic, rather than the Technicolor live-action version — although it’s not terrible by any means. In Marseilles, a bouillabaisse is made from the day’s by-catch and trash fish off the fishing docks on the Mediterranean, including a fair amount of net-bruised crustaceans that aren’t quite pretty enough for restaurants to feature on their entrée plates. In San Diego, what you’re likely to get instead are whatever entrée fish species are in the restaurant’s fridge. At Café Bleu, where the chef buys fresh fish daily, you’ll get what he wants to use up before tomorrow’s fish comes in — and that includes species that have no relation to the sea life of the  Mediterranean.

You receive a bowl containing poached pieces of a white fish species (the catch of the day), one single jumbo shrimp, one little scallop, a few mussels and Manila clams, and a pink hunk of mild-flavored Atlantic farm-raised salmon. (Salmon is a cold-water fish, so you’d never find it in an authentic bouillabaisse.) Having all the seafood precooked separately is a great idea, guaranteeing that each species is done just as much as it should be, not overcooked in the broth as so often happens. Riding across the bowl, like a Sherpa rope-bridge over the Dudh Khosi River, is a long, lightly toasted halved baguette, with a pile of rouille (red pepper aioli) in the  center.

The waiter poured on the golden broth from a teapot — the standard fish-stock/tomato/fennel broth, a little light in flavor. Mark pinned it down: “I  don’t taste any crustacean shells contributing their flavors to this fish stock, or any saffron.” Classic bouillabaisse usually includes shellfish shells to enrich the stock — not only more shrimps, but typically a clutch of langoustines — spare parts in the stock, best parts in the soup. In the U.S., many chefs substitute Maine lobster “culls” for pricey langoustine. (Missing a claw, about $6 a pound wholesale on this coast — wrong ocean, but a good substitution. Who could object to Maine lobster in anything?) “I agree,” the chef told me later. “It’s the downside of being such a small place. If I’m gonna keep the price-point down, I  don’t have the ability to bring items in just for one dish.” Facing our bouillabaisse, the posse looked upon it and then, almost regretfully, broke the Sherpa baguette-bridge so that the rouille part of the crouton melted into the broth, as it should. It was more bouillabaisse lite than the authentic thing, but it was decent  eating.

Our other entrée was brilliant. As soon as the waiter set down the beef short ribs, Lynne’s fine nose — from all the way across the table — could detect the vanilla bean that went into the marinade. The meat had been marinated in vanilla, black pepper, and wine, then braised to a fall-off-the-bone state before the sauce was reduced and the whole megillah plated over a scrumptious creamy mixture of celery-root purée and mashed potatoes. The vanilla raises it from comforting to sexy. This masterpiece, by the way, costs just  $19.50.

Given the fabulosity of the mushroom vol-au-vent, I took another look at the entrée menu to see where the cèpes might appear again. Wild mushrooms are present in chicken and mushroom orecchiette ($14.50) and in pasta Provençal ($13.50). These look like good bets for gently priced entrées with silver-spoon flavors. A trout dish also includes wild mushrooms, but not the  cèpes.

At the start, the happy-hour prices seduced us into a round of $5 cocktails — could I possibly resist a “perfect margarita” for that price? Well, it was highly imperfect, lackluster and dull, tasting like a bar mix or too much simple syrup (boiled down sugar-water). Ben tried the Mojito, and it was so sweet he  couldn’t stand it, and neither could the rest of us. He switched to the Cambria viognier ($5 happy-hour price, and they did take the spurned Mojito off the bill). When the rest of us took a sampling sip, we realized that the wines were way better than the cocktails. From then on, we switched to various tastes of the grape. The half-glass option allows plenty of room to play at minimal risk. If you’re looking for serious, high-quality reds with character, two choices leap out: a Heitz cabernet (’02) and a Châteauneuf-du-Pape  (’04).

We  didn’t really want dessert, but when Lynne spotted profiteroles on the menu, we decided to gamble on them — Lynne hopefully, me cynically. Profiteroles are mini-cream puffs, easy to make well, even easier to make badly. Here, we suspected that the batter was overbeaten, as the texture was slightly tough and streaky. The puffs were filled with house-made vanilla, dulce de leche, and ultra-rich dark chocolate ice creams, dressed at table with flaming chocolate-rum sauce. Being a bit “PC”-inhibited, I let Ben and Mark make all the puns about “flaming.” Back from godforsaken Fairfield, Mark seemed overwhelmed with gratitude for a decent meal. Or maybe he was just happy to be back in the posse again, down where a friend is a  friend.

ABOUT THE CHEF

When I interviewed him at Soleil @k downtown, where he was opening chef, chef Stephen Clickner disclosed that, growing up in a small town in Pennsylvania, he’d spent his high school summers working in restaurants. Once he got a chance to cook on the line, he realized that this was what he wanted to do for his living. He formally apprenticed for three years under a European-trained chef at a Five Diamond Westin resort at Hilton Head in South Carolina, continued on to work there after graduating, and then to work at the Westin in New Orleans. After a brief stint at Postrio in San Francisco, he hired on with cb5, a corporate food-consulting group that contracts with hotel chains to develop menus and recipes and, in some cases, to actually run the hotel restaurants. For a while, he worked at Rice for them; when cb5 sold Rice back to the hotel, he took a year off to regroup, then returned to the hotel scene to work at Soleil @k at the  Marriott. “When I left the Marriott,” he said, “I took some time off because my son was born, and I spent about six months with him and my wife. I’d never had a son before — first time! I  don’t know what I’m doing! But then I had to go to work again to make some money. I ended up at a place in San Marcos called Market Street Café. I met the owner, and we talked for three or four hours, and I saw his vision, his goal, the direction he was going in, and I wanted to be a part of it. I worked up there for a few months, and we started looking for another property to open, and we found Crush for sale. So we ended up buying it, and we revamped the whole  menu.

“It is a big change to go from doing hotel restaurants to a pair of bistros, but it was refreshing. In a hotel, so many other things are involved that the chef is hardly involved in the food — he’s involved in the menu planning, the ordering, the paperwork, the payroll; he  doesn’t spend a lot of time in the kitchen. I wanted to find a place where I could actually cook again. I love it. It reminds me of why I actually started cooking in the first  place.”

I asked if he did the pastries or had a specialist. “We trained somebody to do that,” he said. “We hired someone who’s still in culinary school, Elizabeth, and she has been one of the best people — so committed, such a strong workhorse, dedicated, and she’s got the right temperament. If the food isn’t right, she redoes it. So glad to find somebody like  that.

“Our philosophy at Café Bleu is fresh, good food — with the opportunity to spend a little money or a lot of money. We want to get the freshest products we can. The presentations are simple, but the techniques are spot-on, and that’s where we push our sous-chefs and line chefs to worry about the cooking…. We get the freshest fish we can, nothing frozen. We buy from local farmers [through Moceri produce company]. Almost everything we make here, we make from scratch — the ice cream, pastries, sauces,  soups.”

Café Bleu

• 3 stars
• (Good to Very Good)

530 University Avenue, Hillcrest, 619-291-1717, cafebleusd.com.

• HOURS: Lunch Monday–Saturday 11:30 a.m.–4:00 p.m.; brunch Sunday 10:30 a.m.–3:00 p.m.; dinner Monday–Thursday 4:00–10:00 p.m., until 11:00 p.m. weekends. Sunday dinner 3:00–10:00 p.m.
• PRICES: Appetizers and shared-plate starters, $6.50–$22.50 ($4–$12 for most happy-hour selections); entrées, $11.50–$25.50. Three-course prix-fixe dinner (several choices per course, changing weekly) Sunday nights $25, matched wine-flight  $17.
• CUISINE AND BEVERAGES: French-accented, wine-friendly seasonal cuisine, with locally grown produce, numerous grazing options. About 50 global wines, most available by the glass and half-glass, with half-price bottle specials Tuesdays, flight specials Wednesdays. Full  bar.
• PICK HITS: Mushroom vol-au-vent; heirloom tomato salad; charcuterie plate; cheese plate; vanilla beef short ribs. Other good bets: fried calamari; duck “two ways”; pasta Provençal with wild  mushrooms.
• NEED TO KNOW: Validated free parking at Union Bank, Fifth and University (southwest side). Pay lot ($6 most nights) next to restaurant. Deep happy-hour discounts (Monday–Saturday 4:00–6:00 p.m., Sunday 3:00–5:00 p.m.) on drinks and appetizers; see “Prices” (above) for other discount specials. Slightly noisy. Eleven lacto-vegetarian grazes, one vegan pasta entrée. Cheese choices listed on blackboard over the bar. Couch and chaise longues  reservable.

Café Bleu has closed since this review was first published. -- Editor, December '09