THERE MUST BE A NEED: IT’S PACKED, PLEASANT

There must be a need for Pastel’s. The place has been open just a few days and already it’s packed.

What’s the story? Is it overflow from the Balboa Bay Club, or the loyal fans of Cathy and Guy Denegre, who used to run La Ferme in Mission Viejo? Or does this stretch of Coast Highway just cry out for a dusty-rose Art Nouveau -ish California cuisine restaurant?

It’s certainly a very pleasant place to eat. You’d never recognize it as a former Chart House (indeed, the building was one of the first in that chain’s history). The dark interior has been opened up with windows; the bar has been turned into a “snug” separate from the dining rooms, and the effect now is light and air and endless vistas of dusty rose.

It says something about our fast-moving culinary times that a place that calls itself a grill doesn’t serve plain steaks and chops. It has exotic pizzas and unusual appetizers and even the grilled meat comes with French wine sauces. When people say “grill,” you understand, they merely mean they want no nonsense or frippery about their avant-gardism.

The recurring notes on this menu are fresh mushrooms of various kinds, bits of bacon (lardons), cooked whole garlic cloves (garlic as a sweet, faintly scented vegetable rather than a flavoring element) and lamb sausage. Right, lamb, as in the lamb sausage pizza. You can get an early survey of the gastronomic ground in the spinach salad, which includes lardons and mushrooms--they were the ones known as ceps or porcini when I tried it--and lamb sausage slices along with the spinach and an arrestingly sharp raspberry-flavored vinegar dressing. It’s an interesting salad, but not one where you ought to root around for more dressing on your mouthful because this is one sharp salad dressing.

The final element of the style is grilling, of course. So far as I can tell, all the meats and fish are grilled, and even the escargots. That’s right, snails on a skewer with mushrooms. It’s disconcerting at first--I don’t believe I’ve ever had snails without some sort of butter sauce and they do seem dry until you get used to the idea--but they are really quite likable. And there is a sauce for these faintly broiled-tasting gastropods, a dollop of garlic-flavored mayonnaise on a radicchio leaf.

The pizzas and pastas seem to be pretty good, though I can’t speak for all of them. Certainly the pizzas have a nice bready dough and the three-colored fusilli (two-colored as I had it; they’d run out of red) comes with an enjoyable and sort of sloppy sauce of mushroom-flavored cream with prosciutto. There are only four or five pizzas, though, and only two pastas. The emphasis of this menu is on meat, and for this stretch of Coast Highway relatively little on fish.

Maybe the best of them is the duck that comes in a honey-flavored sauce with slivers of ginger. Paillard of chicken--usually the plainest of grilled meats in an Italian restaurant--comes with a strong Cabernet wine sauce, the meat topped with a pat of her butter. This may be gilding the paillard, but I, for one, am up for it. Lamb chops come with a rather similar wine sauce, and as a concession to those who cannot conceive of lamb without mint a lurid green pot of lamb jelly. Personally, I think the jelly works best as a splash of color contrast to all the dusty rose decor, but I’ll grant that it’s good mint jelly.

And so on: Nice veal with loads of porcini mushrooms and a meaty sauce, a beefsteak in wine sauce flavored with green peppercorns, a fish of the day with a Hawaiian name and fresh tomato sauce on the side. Everything is really pretty good, and the only complaint I have is with the seafood brochette and that’s only because it’s skimpy. Come on, now--three large prawns and two pieces of lobster for $15?

Vegetables tend to get quaint treatment. An artichoke heart may be stuffed with finely shredded carrot--a peculiar idea, playing something sweet against the faint bittersweetness of artichoke. A length of zucchini may be excavated as a little pot for creamed spinach--a better culinary idea, and certainly the result is color-coordinated.

The strongest point of this kitchen is the desserts, which are really outstanding. There are cheesecakes--sticky, tangy ones with unusual flavors such as maple or walnut. There’s a “chocolate pate,” a semi-commonplace idea these days but a good version, as it were, Cadbury’s with a spreadable texture. Both of these come in raspberry sauce, the chocolate also getting some custard sauce.

The very best, though, is the simplest and most unassuming: cream caramel. I can’t even see the caramel layer, but there’s a caramel flavor to it. Above all, it’s irresistibly creamy with an unusual texture, smooth but somehow crumbly. This is major cream caramel, the best I’ve ever had in Orange County.

Prices are reasonable (though the wine list is a little pricey). Appetizers run $2.50 to $5.50, entrees $5.75 to $15.

PASTEL’S BAR AND GRILL 1520 W. Coast Highway, Newport Beach

548-7167

Open for dinner Wednesday through Monday; closed Tuesday. American Express, Mastercard and Visa accepted.