A GOOD-FOOD, BAD-FOOD YUPPERAMA

Piret’s--at Robertson and Olympic boulevards, just a quick jog across the street from Jane Fonda’s Workout--looks from the outside like just another tastefully stark croissant joint in yet another antiseptic-white-pod mall. In fact, it does serve croissants--plain, chocolate and almond--as well as croissants stuffed with various meats and cheeses and, the latest entry in the American rape of the croissant, croissant stuffed with scrambled eggs, smoked salmon and onions.

But Piret’s doesn’t stop there. The seventh such link in a chain wending its way north from San Diego and Orange counties with this, its first L.A. store, Piret’s is a full-service yupperama--a patisserie/charcuterie/bistro/boulangerie, take-out, eat-in, espresso/wine bar, breakfast, lunch and dinner place, its grocery shelves stocked with designer olive oil and vinegar, Piret’s cookbooks, Piret’s coffee mugs, Piret’s aprons, jams and coffee.

Deli cases display pates, quiches, tartes and tourtes , pasta salads, ceviche , fancy cheese and sausages. After a workout, endomorphines pumping, ladies in smart sweats and leg warmers gather round the deli case, casting sidelong glances at a pastry display of gorgeous-looking stuff brought up fresh each day from the Piret’s mother bakery down south.

But is everything as wonderful as it looks? The answer is a resounding yes and no. Yes to the flaky, buttery croissants and rich jam; no to the mealy bran muffins (for real bran muffins, go to Il Fornaio); yes to the light, faintly lemony kasha salad, accented by the crunchy slivers of green pepper and radish; no to the mushroom and hearts of palm salads that are waterlogged and tasteless (you’d think with all the classy olive oil around, they’d spare a tastier brand for their salads); yes to the curried chicken salad that has too much of everything--curry powder, raisins, celery, chicken--and is therefore delicious; an enthusiastic yes to the tarte provencale , a deep-dish tomato pie French version of pizza with its buttery crust; and a flat “forget it” for the ratatouille, a characterless tomato-y mass that contains some of the toughest eggplant hunks ever foisted on an unwary public. I could go on, but you get the point. The food goes from confidently tasteful to weirdly awful, a problem that doesn’t go away when you sit down to dinner.

The restaurant proper is out of sight to the back of the store and up some stairs to a room that stands as a monument to post-modernist interior design--Levelor blinds, geometrical wall art, outsize flower arrangements, everything in cool gray and smart black, a single bud in each vase.

The menu is vast. It offers everything in the deli case plus pastas, fish, chicken, veal, lamb, calzone, pizza and a computerized list of daily specials, including a tempting list of wine sold by the glass.

To tide us over while we decided on dinner, the waitress suggested calzone stuffed with Portuguese sausage, ricotta cheese, red onion, mango chutney, Dijon mustard, green peppercorns, garlic and fresh herbs--a combination she called “amazing.” Amazing it was--amazingly weird--and we should have known better than to trust her judgment about the Norwegian Salmon Vierge, topped with creme fraiche and grain mustard sauce.

“Amazing,” said our young, enthusiastic waitress. “It’s perfectly poached. The sauce is delicious.”

When it came, it was beautiful, as promised, perfectly poached, plentiful, and it would have been a bargain at $12.50 (a price that included salad or soup, good French bread and sweet butter) had the fish or its sauce had any flavor at all.

The same went for the Mediterranean Fish Stew--mussels and white fish in a vegetable broth with couscous and garlic rouille. It looked great, cost only $9.25 with salad or soup, but was just plain dull.

As for the desserts, the two we tried--lemon roulade and bagatelle with a marzipan icing--told us that the ladies who’d been gazing longingly into the pastry case hadn’t missed much.

But just when I was about to write the place off as having all form and no content, I lucked out on another visit by ordering that day’s pasta--red, white and green fettuccini with a generous portion of poached boned chicken breast in a wild mushroom sauce so heavily stocked with chanterelles that the dish had me scraping my plate for every last bit of that musty, smoky, wild-mushroom taste. Go figure. And this, including soup or any salad from the deli case, or a delicious green salad loaded up with cubes of good Emmenthal cheese, Parmesan, bacon bits, walnuts and toasted croutons, for a mere $8.95.

For that pasta (and--who knows?--there might be other such treasures on that menu), with a nice glass of chilled Raymond Napa Valley Chardonnay, I wouldn’t even mind sitting in their black wooden chairs, which look very stylish but hit a person’s back in the exact wrong spot.

Piret’s, 998 S. Robertson Blvd., Los Angeles, (213) 657-2545. Mondays-Thursdays, 7:30 a.m.-11 p.m.; Fridays, 7:30 a.m.-midnight; Saturdays, 9 a.m.-midnight; Sundays, 9 a.m.-11 p.m. Visa, MasterCard, American Express. Wine and beer. Parking in lot. Dinner for two (food only), $25 to $50.