By Paul Reidinger

BOULEVARD IS NOT yet our La Coupole – it is only a decade old, for one thing, not a century – but the signs of healthy rootedness are there. That's no small accomplishment in a rootless society and at a historical moment when time itself seems to move more quickly, hurried along by electronic gizmos and a culture of 24-7 in all its breathless manifestations. A decade in California ought to count like a century in Europe, and a restaurant that reaches its 10th birthday in this tremulous city belongs to a fairly select group.

When I last visited Boulevard, four years ago, I had the sense that everyone in town was there – all boulevards lead to Boulevard and so forth. Techsters in their sleek black getups, dowdy publishing types in need of haircuts and new spectacles, rich families with sulky children, out-of-towners, Greens and those who loved them – it was a glimpse of the fabled American melting pot, with one important proviso: You had to have some dough to eat there. The place was fairly pricey when it opened in 1993, noticeably pricier six years later, and no less pricey (or busy) today, despite several years of hard economic going hereabouts.

Although there is no getting away from Boulevard's crème de la crème aura, I am not really complaining. The tone is civilized, warm, and welcoming, and while the food is expensive, the experience as a whole is worth the price of the ticket. A quietly festive buzz permeates the restaurant; it feels like an elegant but not stuffy party at which guests are made to feel individually coddled. The emotional tone is that of a holiday, and never more markedly so than during the holiday season, an interval of chilly air, early darkness, and sociability.

Producing the coddling effect requires a sizable staff, and the Boulevardiers are in ample supply. (Their numbers alone go quite a way toward accounting for the prices.) There is rarely a moment when some front-of-the-house functionary is more than an arm's length away, and to sit at the dining counter (not a bad plan, incidentally, for walk-ins) is to marvel at the army of sous chefs and line cooks who never stop sautéing and plating and never seem to lose their composure. It's like watching a famous ballet company perform the Nutcracker: everybody knows what to do and when to do it, having done it all many times before.

The owner and onetime chef, Nancy Oakes, has always favored a haute meat-and-potatoes sort of menu, and time has not eroded that basic inclination. It is true that you can find lighter, though hardly unstylish, items on Boulevard's menus: a Dungeness crab salad ($14.75), say, the meat (carefully removed from the legs in whole oblong pieces) molded into a stubby obelisk and served with sections of ruby-red grapefuit; or a Dungeness crab risotto ($16.95), napped with a lemony crab bisque sauce; or a piece of Hawaiian butterfish ($28.95), sautéed and served with a tomato-herb aqua pazzo and a Sicilian mélange of spinach, capers, and pine nuts.

"It's like steak!" my companion marveled with respect to the butterfish.

Yes. One did suspect the complicity of butter in the richness of the fish. But the core of Boulevard's culinary style continues to be meat in one guise or another. I thought the roasted pork tenderloin ($16.75) – stuffed with apples, chestnuts, and cranberries and served with braised kale and slices of roasted delicata squash – was a bit overroasted; it's nice to see at least a hint of pink in pork. The roasted lamb sirloin ($26), meanwhile, (dished up with artichoke hearts, roasted Yukon gold potato quarters, and jus) was if anything a tad underdone; I'd asked for medium-rare but found a couple of the slices to be nearly raw – or bleu, as they might say (uncomplainingly) at La Coupole.

Even transitional dishes often have an unpoultryish heartiness – meaty duck-confit tostadas ($9.75), for example, augmented by pomegranate seeds and, on the side, little heaps of sour cream and guacamole. But, as in years past, it is the potatoes one notices with respect to heft; the lowly, glorious spud has long provided a keel to the Boulevard style. Potatoes (pureed) lurk in a white asparagus soup ($11.50) enlivenened with sautéed rock shrimp, transforming it into a near relation of vichyssoise; they appear, mashed, with the pork tenderloin and, roasted, with the lamb. You could eat at Boulevard without consuming a potato, but you would have to be a diner on a mission and alert to the innumerable possible permutations: creamy, crispy, subtle, always rich. The place could not be what it is without them.

And perfecting the theme of ballast are the desserts, which tend to be big. A chocolate tart ($9.50) is basically a disk of chocolate mousse encased in a crust of bittersweet chocolate and served with lengths of caramelized banana and a cap of banana ice cream: sublime, but not for dieters. And a chocolate pot de crème ($7.50), served in a martini glass with a puff of cinnamon whipped cream and a pair of corrrugated fruit tuiles, took two people (one an enthusiastic volunteer from the other side of the table) to finish. On the scale of satisfying stuffedness, we agreed Boulevard rates very high, perhaps even a 10 out of 10.