CULINARY UPS AND DOWNS ON THE WAVE

Wave, 2820 Main St., Santa Monica, (213) 399-9114. Open for dinner nightly from 6-11:30 p.m. (till 1 a.m. on weekends). Open for weekend brunch from 11:30 a.m.-3 p.m. Full bar. Valet parking. All major credit cards. Dinner for two, food only, $40-$60.

“Didn’t that work for you?” asked the maitre d’, looking at the uneaten spinach linguine on my friend’s plate. “What didn’t work for you?” She looked miserably down, pushing scallops and mussels around with her fork. When the man continued to grill her, she finally whispered something about having eaten too many appetizers.

“He forced me to lie!” she cried when he finally left the table. “I hate it when they do that!”

“You shouldn’t have been so nice,” I replied. “You should have told him there was too much ginger in the cream sauce.” “Why?” growled the Reluctant Gourmet. “We are not here to do market research for them.”

The hovering at Wave is sometimes overwhelming; one night, five different people asked us how things were in less than an hour. This can be annoying. On the other hand, you aren’t usually forced to lie; for the most part, you can tell the truth and say that everything is fine. This is fairly surprising when you consider that the restaurant has only been open a few weeks--and that it has been packed from Day 1.

The crowds came for two reasons. The first is that the pink building (why is every new restaurant in Los Angeles suddenly pink?) is intriguingly attractive. More attractive to most people, however, is the rumor that Prince is one of the principal backers. (This may or may not be true; what is true is that Prince’s manager, Steve Fargnoli, is.) But despite the crowds, I have found that reservations are honored with alacrity, food comes quickly out of the kitchen, and my major complaint about the service is that it is a little too swift. One night four of us ate three courses apiece, drank two bottles of wine and were out the door in 90 minutes. “Do you think the waiter gets some sort of a prize for getting rid of us so quickly?” asked the RG.

“What we wanted to do,” says Richard Congdon, who shares ownership of the restaurant with his brother Michael and Fargnoli, “is create a restaurant where our friends could come to eat two or three times a week. We wanted it to be elegant, serve good food--and not cost a lot of money.” He sees the place as a sort of cross between Morton’s and Spago--which should give you a fair notion of what he considers affordable. “We wanted the food to be fresh and constantly changing,” notes Congdon, adding that he is “not a gourmet.”

If none of this sounds very promising to you, you are not alone. I had no great expectations, and the RG took one look at the beautiful room (which has the air of a new-wave L’Orangerie) and became positively hostile. “It’s going to be one of those places where they spent so much money on the decor that they had none left over for the food,” he said wearily. Anybody who has a passing acquaintance with California cuisine could have written this menu with his eyes closed; it’s that familiar mix of pizzas (one has wild mushrooms and goat cheese), grilled fish, and pasta tangled up with strange ingredients.

But when the pizza arrived our little group cheered up. The fragrant pie was simple and delicious, really fresh tomatoes and basil and garlic on a beautifully cooked, chewy crust. Then the appetizers came, and after tasting shrimp that had been wrapped in basil and Italian bacon and then baked to a fine crispness, it became clear that there is real accomplishment in the kitchen. There is also, unfortunately, an odd tendency to preciousness: The excellent Caesar salad has been carefully arranged so that the croutons form a perfect circle around the greens, and a fine ceviche looks rather silly with its individual scallops dancing about a pool of tomatillo sauce. This tendency turns into absolute absurdity when three little chicken wings are served on a single plate (for $5.50), each made into a tiny drumstick waiting to be dipped into a mustard marmalade sauce that tastes exactly like Tang.

The service also has its silly moments. A waitress described a special of the day as veal chop served with “julied brandy and rosemary,” a puzzling description if ever I’ve heard one. (I’d have guessed she meant julienne, but I don’t know how you slice brandy.) In any case, the veal chop was fine. A rack of lamb on another night was also excellent, and my favorite dish on the regular menu--the Rio plate--pairs filet mignon with a chile relleno, fine black beans and salsa. The grilled fish are generally safe. You’d be wise, however, to steer clear of the more baroque concoctions like a chopped salad of sliced duck, Gorgonzola and orange, or those odd pasta dishes that include ingredients like duck, port, mushrooms and juniper berries.

The desserts tend to be the most baroque dishes on the menu, and they could all use work. A special baked apple turned out to be poached, stuffed with hazelnut mousse and then enrobed in a rather soggy pastry; I’d have much preferred a plain baked apple. Chocolate cake would have been preferable to the chocolate concoctions I’ve been served here too, like the solid chocolate boat that was filled with chocolate mousse, surrounded with strawberry puree and sprinkled with fresh strawberries, kiwis and shavings of white chocolate. It was almost impossible to eat, and once I did succeed in breaking a bite off, it didn’t taste very good to me.

On the other hand, you never know; maybe the dish will work for you.