BACK TO AN OLD L.A. FAVORITE

Trader Vic’s, Beverly Hilton Hotel, 9876 Wilshire Blvd, Beverly Hills. (213) 276-6345. Open daily from 5 p.m. to 1 a.m. (Closed Christmas and Thanksgiving.) Valet parking. All major credit cards accepted. Dinner for two: $60 to $90 (food only).

Sometimes I wonder if we have not all climbed on some sort of crazy gastronomic trendmill, speeding faster and ever faster in all directions to nowhere. Mystic statistics rev the pace and “cuisines” flash by in basic colors. We gulp on the run and sing hallelujah. As in a film gone wild, warm duck salad dissolves to pasta primavera, to kung pao shrimp to Buffalo wings, to pomegranates stuffed with crawfish and tomatoes dried in the noonday sun. . . . Food as fashion. Food becomes more where and who than what.

“I am so sorry lasagna is out of style,” a nice lady lamented. “I was very fond of lasagna.” A loved one has passed.

We have loved them all in their time. Loved them and left them: California Cuisine, French Japanese, Chinese provincial, classical French, Cajun, Southwestern, Italian--Los Angeles has probably the finest Italian restaurants outside of a few places in Italy--sushi, pizza, gumbo, lobster in black bean sauce . . . and now comes Good Old American in black and white, signaled by the return of diners, coffee shops, grills and recipes for apple pie. The latest, the in- est--except possibly for Caribbean, reported very big in New York right now.

Lasagna? Nevermore.

I have no idea why this is so, or even if it only seems to be so with dedication and purpose lurking beneath the skittering. But I do know it is no way to build a restaurant city. It was therefore reassuring to find status cars backed to the street in the parking lot of the recently reopened Trader Vic’s. “All our regular customers have come back,” said manager Oswaldo Llorens. “We can’t even take reservations from people we don’t know.” Regular customers? For a restaurant that has been around for more than 30 years? Old friends remaining faithful during all those months Trader Vic’s was closed for renovation? Tooloo, toolay. How sweet it is.

Loyalty has not entirely disappeared then, although curiosity seems the stronger motivation. Old friends may not be forgotten, but they are postponed while that greener grass is investigated. The result will be--is being--a constant reshuffling of chefs, menus and locations to create the illusion of new from the out-of-breath old. Which means ignoring those staying in one place and struggling toward wished-for greatness. There are restaurants consistently rated best in city by everyone--including the impatient foodies--standing empty while imitators play to full houses.

So, hail Trader Vic’s with its parking lot filled with the requisite cars, and people at all its tables. It is not entirely loyalty they prove, but the absurdity of the conviction that exciting new experiences are to be found only in the new places. I have never gone to Trader Vic’s without finding something new, usually exciting, sometimes astounding, interesting at the very least.

The late Victor Bergeron had an extraordinarily creative mind, with a French instinct for precision, and a great respect for the verities of food. He was adroitly fitting Oriental food to American tastes while everyone else was still genuflecting before the classics.

He was a great advocate of simplicity, experimented with anything that came his way, from green peppercorns to the delicate tepari beans, both of which he introduced, along with morel mushrooms, langostinos, limestone lettuce, sunflower seeds, achiote , the kiwi and more. In other words, he was a long way ahead of his time and a super-emphatic original.

The renovation has resulted in an exceedingly tactful soothing of the original exuberance. It is still recognizably Trader Vic’s, neatened and freshly pressed. The dining room has been reapportioned to a more sweeping perspective, still with its favored sections--the Alcove, the Cabin and Captain Cook’s Deck--but I prefer the Garden Room with its wide-windowed view. The Boathouse Bar is new, the kitchen was redone and the private dining room is larger.

It is the same and not the same. More congruent. Final touches to the decor of a new Trader Vic’s used to be made the night before the opening by a special task force headed by Alex Kaluzhny, and including the Trader, Chan Wong (the essential vice president), the menehunes and a barrel of beer. (The menehunes are the mythical leprechauns of Hawaii, prodigious workers of great strength. They were invisibly on staff for a while.) Canoes were hung from the ceiling, the spears and masks and tapas and giant shells placed to best advantage, tropical plants set forth, etc. The new look is more intended, more sedate, with coral, ship models, more beams than tapa, more nautical than islandy--and the canoes are polished.

The new menu still offers familiar choices of direction--the pake (sort of South-Sea Cantonese), the Chinese ovens, curries, seafood, appetizers that could make a meal. By and large, it is still Victor Bergeron’s menu, with some deletions and some new dishes, and I had the same trouble I always have in choosing.

The quibbling decision was for some of the new, and some of the favorite old. Among the appetizers: the crackly Parmesan wafers the Trader created from nothing but grated cheese; deep-fried calamari crisped with Japanese bread crumbs; Padang prawns with a spicy coconut and chile coating; a wonderfully rich and creamy treatment of morel mushrooms on tiny triangles of toast, and another, similar, of lovely, fresh crab legs; shrimp and parsley chopped and wrapped in bacon. . . . Those were the best. I was less happy with rumaki, egg roll and crispy duck--mostly, I suppose, because they were more usual. The new salads include agar-agar , the seaweed, with Wasabi dressing; paper-thin--and peppery--abalone, tomatoes and celery; Cosmo with hearts of artichoke, shiitake mushrooms and celery, all with a sly emphasis on texture.

I never manage to stray far from the dishes coming from the Chinese ovens. Made of brick and fire-clay, the ovens are fired with white oak logs to an intense, indirect heat that retains juices and adds a mild smoky flavor. The Indonesian lamb roast, was not quite as I remembered one night, better on a second try. I did not find it the best treatment for lobster, but salmon responded nicely to oven broiling. Whitefish, more conventionally treated, lightly crumbed, lightly sauteed, was splendid.

Asparagus was well-nigh lyrical in its simplicity, precisely sliced to uniform diagonals, sauteed in butter. And I found myself unexpectedly enamored with a dessert called a mud pie, no more than excellent ice cream encased in excellent chocolate with no more needed.

The wine list must have been overlooked in all the redoing. It is rather a haphazard selection with some good bottles, no vintage dates, but very fair prices.

Otherwise, Victor Bergeron built a strong organization that stays convincingly on course. Llorens, who has been with the company since he opened the Portland Trader Vic’s as manager in 1959 and has been the Beverly Hills manager since 1979, is still very competently in charge. Elmo Yee remains as executive chef.

Is Trader Vic’s different without Victor Bergeron? Well, yes. The menehunes are gone.