CASSIS HAS STYLE BUT FUZZY FOCUS

I am crazy about coastlines with rocky edges, fir trees and fish fresh from the sea. Having the good fortune to go sailing in Maine recently, I serendipitously plucked a truly great meal from the land: pungent yarrow and tender beach peas foraged in the rocks, mussels gathered at low tide, sweet and tiny blueberries picked as we moved on to dessert. It was hard to leave the loons and ospreys to return to Los Angeles.

Fancying the Cote d’Azur nearly as much as Maine, I was cheered to learn about Cassis, a restaurant featuring the “Cuisine of the Sun”--that of Nice and Southern France. Operated by two of the owners of the former Entourage, Cassis opened recently on the same site.

Nothing like Maine or the Nice I once knew, Cassis is cushy, even plush. Besides muted carpeting, etched glass, mauve and gray walls, there are alcoves, lots of greenery and ultra-comfortable booths. Cassis is quiet and relaxed, decorator pretty, generically chic. It’s simple and elegant and out of focus and overdone--which is rather my mixed response to the food.

The menu has clearly been carefully thought out. Steadfast dishes are redone with verve. One of my very favorite Nicoise soups-- soupe de poisson --was a real delight: puree smooth and tweaked with a bit of saffron, it was served with a generous portion of hot garlic toast and a luscious, fiery rouille . But watercress soup was darkly, unpleasantly raw. Goat cheese in puff pastry came silken and oozing, crisp and hot, and was not enhanced by an unannounced (and undistinguished) tomato sauce.

Salads, generally imaginative, were not exacting as they might be. The salade Cassis , with thin, thin, expensive French green beans, watercress, steamed broccoli and a handful of sparkling fresh black currants--a winey cross between blue and cranberries--was doused with a so-what vinaigrette. Grilled and smoky warm quail salad with bracing endive and rasped radicchio was marred by too much dressing. At lunch one day, a salade nicoise-- made with charbroiled strips of succulent fresh tuna, tender butter lettuce, those expensive green beans--appeared with banal canned olives. The simple inclusion of good Greek or Nicoise olives would have transformed the dish.

The Cassis kitchen is good with standards. Breast of chicken with rosemary was tender, fragrant, juicy and served with a haystack of terrific, crisp string-thin French fries. A salad of those welcome green beans and fat scampi grilled with a light pesto was fine. Gnocchi with spinach, sage and parmesan was totally melt-in-your-mouth.

Too bad everything isn’t that good. The paillard of veal was pedestrian and chewy, the ginger orange sauce commonplace. A tuna steak was overcooked and unpleasant-tasting. (Service is impeccable, I might point out, and the waiter, seeing we had eaten two bites of the tuna, insisted on informing the owner. George Lachkar, a kind and turbo-engined human being, apologized and took the fish off the bill.)

Chef Didier Quincampoix has inventively combined pasta with the sea. One evening we had nubby black linguine with sea scallops, the coral still attached. It was like sea urchin sushi piggybacking along. A green lasagne made of bay shrimp and salmon mousseline was also intriguing, dense and rich.

Better than yarrow and beach peas and coming in for a close first prize with those Maine mussels were two Cassis desserts. The black currant sorbet was riveting and served in a delicate flower-shaped wafer. The raspberry creme brulee (not at all “brulee”) was the best dessert I’ve had in months, the flavors of cream and berry mingling in the stratosphere. A Norman apple tarte, with thin puff pastry topped with nearly translucent apple slices and Calvados was served in grand style. Sugar and sour cream were added at the table.

We imitated Down East accents as we polished off our desserts and listened to the natives at the next table readying themselves for a studio pitch. It was a little odd sitting amid all that modern chic while they talked about a “contemporary ‘Honeymooner’s’ ” series.

Cassis, 8450 W. 3rd St., Los Angeles. (213) 653-1079. Lunch, Monday-Friday, 11:30-3; dinner, Monday-Saturday, 6-midnight. Closed Sundays. Valet parking. Full bar. All major credit cards. Dinner for two: (food only) $35-$65.