Venue Review: Sante

You look at this restaurant, this menu, in this building, with these people, and you believe things could have been just like this for the past century or so, and could go on just like this for another.

Exposed brick walls and a pressed tin ceiling surround white-paper-topped tables and paintings of landscapes. Crocks of butter and of soft, warm cloves of roasted garlic arrive with dinner rolls. A server wrestles with a cranky espresso machine. (No, those weren't around 'til the '30s, but the image fits, doesn't it?)

Chef Adam Reed helped relocated New Yorkers open a restaurant here nearly 10 years ago - just after the building was named to the National Historic Register - and continued as executive chef before buying it in 2001. He and his wife, Veronica, renamed it for the French toast "a votre sante" or "to your health."

Reed cooked at old-school New York spots such as the Russian Tea Room and Rene Pujol, and his grandparents were French; he keeps a French-inspired menu, not a hidebound one. "I try to make the food approachable - American with a good, strong French foundation of discipline and techniques."

There's a cheese plate starter (Camembert, Petite Basque, St. Andre chevre and Roquefort), but also an avocado egg roll. A country salad, but also one of arugula with prosciutto and parmesan. A portobello terrine with goat cheese was a favorite, bits of avocado making it even richer.

Some entrees are traditional - delicate lamb chops as a special, pan-seared free-range chicken (Reed says customers would revolt if he took it off the menu), surprisingly flavorful veal cutlets. Others are not at all, as in honey-mustard-glazed salmon over a coconut basmati rice tower with Asian mango salsa. Another menu stalwart, this was also a favorite - well-executed and generous.

Another special, wild striped bass, was shown off to good advantage with a potato hash, marred only by rubbery nibs of shellfish.

Desserts include quite nice profiteroles, pastry shells just starting to soften under their filling of vanilla ice cream, and the chocolate sauce not overwhelming them all. Creme brulee was a little loose-textured, while cobbler leaned to the pastry side, rather than the fruit. (And the espresso machine won, so skip it.)

"Matthews has gotten so busy," Reed says. "Just looking at the street (out Sante's front window), there used to be a trickling of traffic. Now it's a constant stream. .... When we came here, we were one of the better restaurants here, in all of Charlotte. I have felt the pressure of that. I've refined my food, and (customers' tastes) have come to the maturity and point I want."

The building has proved its longevity with varied usefulness; it reportedly once was a barbershop offering Saturday night baths for gentlemen. For a small place with some timelessness about it, Sante shows versatility, too.

One night, all the occupied tables sported couples, and I thought (after deciding Wednesday must be date night in Matthews) that this small place best serves those looking for a quiet little dinner alone.

But on our next visit, several tables had been pushed together for a party of 13 along one wall - and the charm held up. This was an all-age group, with nodding older men acceding to wives' wishes on seating arrangements. Long-lived habit, I guessed, and this seemed just as right.