FIRST IMPRESSIONS: Hy’s just opened a week...

FIRST IMPRESSIONS: Hy’s just opened a week ago in Century City (10131 Constellation Blvd., (213) 553-6000), but it is immediately familiar; you feel you’ve been there 100 times before. This is not because the former Princess restaurant has been little changed for its reincarnation as a steak house, but because the menu, the service and the clientele are vaguely old fashioned.

You’ve seen the menu before. The steaks are very good, the shrimp cocktail is respectable and the salads are fine. There is a lot of other stuff to order--swordfish, baby lobster tails, scampi--but the meat is the main thing. It comes with potatoes and cheese bread, and the prices are rather reasonable; steaks start at $14 and peak at $21.50 for a pound and a quarter of tender porterhouse. If you like, you can watch your steak as it sizzles on a wonderfully frivolous contraption that looks like a bordello bathtub with a grill on top.

The service is solicitous; waiters like to mix and carve and cart things to the table. The tables are widely spaced, the noise level is comfortable, and the room is light enough so that you can see that it is filled with lots of blond young women and graying older men.