His regulars are special people, he says. They enjoy his food so much that they come in up to four times a week to eat in the rustic cafe that Pedro and his wife, Rosemary, have operated since 1984. It's an intimate place in the first block of Big Basin Way, full of wood paneling, lattice on the ceiling and wide, wooden booths.

Pedro describes his food as continental—or European—and describes himself as a saucier—a specialist in sauce-making. While sauces in the days before refrigeration were used mainly to smother the taste of foods that were going bad, they now are used to enhance a dish and bring out its flavors.

The French refined sauce-making into an art, classifying hundreds of sauces into five "mother sauces"—espanole (brown stock-based), velouté (light stock-based), béchamel (basic white sauce), hollandaise and mayonnaise (emulsified) and vinaigrette (oil and vinegar combinations).

Pedro uses a béchamel sauce on his beef Wellington—a fillet of beef covered with a paté of duck livers, wrapped in pastry and baked. He uses an espanole sauce, which he makes with burgundy wine ("lots of it," he says) on his saltimbocca, an Italian dish of finely sliced veal sprinkled with sage and topped with a thin slice of prosciutto. It is sautéed in butter and then braised in wine before additional cooking.

"I go through the cookbooks and change one thing to another," he says. "I always like to change things." His dinner menu offers pastas, seafood, fowl, beef and vegetarian dishes that change regularly, but his Chicken Normandy, Rendezvous Pasta ($14.95) and Rendezvous Steak ($16.95) remain specialties of the house, along with a dessert of Gran Marnier Soufflé for $7.95.

Pedro is the head chef, and Rosemary runs the front of the house. They offer breakfast, lunch and dinner with part-time help from their daughter Tanya, 22, who is studying to be a nurse, and son Francisco, 31, who runs his own construction company. During the 19 years the Morins have owned the Rendezvous, the restaurant has been an after-school job for all four of the Morin children. An older son and daughter are now married with children. Elder daughter Gigi, 36, is the one whom Pedro feels is a gourmet and has followed in his footsteps. "Sauces are a big thing with her, too," he notes.

Pedro started as kitchen help after school in the Stone Cellar restaurant in Menlo Park. The owner became his mentor, and what was part-time work for a 16-year-old soon became a career.

"Fourteen and a half years later, he had taught me everything I know," Pedro reflects.

He moved on to cook locally in the Hyatt House, La Hacienda, The Plumed Horse and Vince's Seafood in San Mateo. "In the 1970s, we were cooking lots of lobster Thermidor and crab au gratin," he says with a smile, remembering when dishes rich in butter and cheese were considered good.

What are things like today? "People are picky and want to cut the prices down," he says, referring to the slower economy.

Village Rendezvous is located at 14420 Big Basin Way, Saratoga. It is open for breakfast and lunch daily from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m., and for dinner Wednesday through Saturday from 5 to 9 p.m. For more information, call 408.867.2932.