CHARM TO SPARE AT DOMINICK’S

Dominick’s, 8715 Beverly Blvd., West Hollywood, (213) 652-5228. Open Tuesday-Friday for lunch and dinner. Open Saturday for dinner. Closed Sunday and Monday. Parking in lot. Beer and wine. MasterCard and Visa accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $30-$55.

You can’t help liking Dominick’s; it’s the restaurant that all the new American places are trying to be. It looks like a shack on the waterfront (listen, you can almost hear the water) or a roadhouse off the interstate somewhere in the heart of the country (no, maybe it’s the whir of the trucks rolling by.) There is history in every pore of the place, from the brick that props up a nail that is holding up a piece of the front wall to the funky slope of the roof. It looks like the set for some ‘40s movie, or the place where Tammy Wynette was discovered, or a rustic cabin in the mountains. What it does not look like is an urban restaurant in the heart of Los Angeles.

But despite the property value of the land on which it sits, Dominick’s has never acquired a patina of sophistication. Only yesterday they were serving Lancers and frozen peas. The new owner, Ron Braun (who also owns Muse), has brought in a real wine list and thrown out the frozen food, but Dominick’s continues to be the most charmingly eccentric restaurant in town. The preferred entrance is from the rear and through the kitchen, reservations are taken on the pay phone by the bar, and from time to time the cooks come strolling into the dining room just to see what’s going on. Everybody who works here seems slightly addled. This is all so contagious that patrons find themselves passing French fries (wonderful French fries) from booth to booth and insisting that perfect strangers taste their food. It’s as if we had all wandered into small-town America and discovered that this is exactly where we want to be.

The wooden booths are made of lumpy red vinyl, the lamps look like they were manufactured in a summer-camp crafts shop, and the waitresses are so charming that when a rare burger turns out well-done, you find yourself apologizing for troubling them to take it back. You don’t mind when the orders get mixed up, and when something turns out to be wonderful, you are genuinely thrilled.

Unfortunately, the thrills are few. On my first visit, I was so anxious to be charmed that when a seafood chowder arrived, filled with cream and crunchy corn, packed with mussels and clams, dotted with little bits of potato, I was delighted. I liked the spicy little bullets of sausage with their chopped fresh pepper relish too. I was even impressed with the guacamole, which comes with dense blue corn chips and fluffy yellow ones. I ate two corn muffins and allowed as how I would like to eat here every night.

But then the entrees came and, with the best will in the world, it was hard to be very upbeat. I did my best, waxing rapturous about the mashed potatoes (they are worth a trip) and the buttery spinach. But then I just sort of sputtered out of adjectives, faced with a skinny steak, an overdone roast chicken and some dry swordfish. Grilled tenderloin of pork with three tiny baked apples was delicious, but egg fettuccine with roasted marinated vegetables was so greasy it was just plain inedible. I was disappointed, but undaunted; I still loved the place.

And so back I came. I had some more of the good chowder, and followed it with a fine warm spinach salad topped with chopped egg and bacon and sauteed mushrooms. This time, the steak had grown fatter and was, if not memorable, completely acceptable. I’d have to say the same for pan-fried rainbow trout. But then the waitress arrived with the dessert of the day, an enormous platter of strawberries and vanilla ice cream that was so large four of us were unable to finish it. Spooning up the cold white ice cream and the ripe red berries, we began to feel like children at a birthday party; once again, I was enchanted by the way the place made me feel. I just had to go back.

At lunchtime, the food is on less shaky ground. There are soups and salads and an enormous hamburger perched on an onion roll. There are those spectacular French fries (“I need some more,” said the man at the next table, “I just want to rub them all over my face”) and really good coleslaw. The catsup is the sugarless kind, and the tomatoes actually have some flavor, which is astonishing at this time of the year. There is also a good Reuben sandwich, and a dish called “chicken carnitas” that comes covered with flour tortillas, guacamole, salsa and shredded chicken. It’s a lot of good, fresh-tasting food.

In the daytime, with the sun coming through the slats, the restaurant looks even funkier than it does when the lights are low. The service is fairly funky too; it is good-natured and so slapdash that you have the impulse to jump up and make sure the waitress has remembered to place your order. As long as you’re not in a hurry, this has its charm.

Night or day, Dominick’s has plenty of charm. This is not a restaurant for the hip or the harried, and it is certainly not a restaurant for a Foodie. But for anyone who wants a restaurant that does not take itself too seriously, Dominick’s is a very pleasant place to be.