CUISINE OF THE ABSURD--TV SPORTS, CLASSY GRUB

Ozzie’s is a busy place full of people giving no apparent thought to how very odd the place is. From the front door, where certificates from French gourmet and wine appreciation societies are prominently displayed, you stare into a sports bar where two big-screen TV sets are roaring away with professional wrestling. The oddness doesn’t stop there.

Ozzie’s claims to serve New American Cuisine, and I’m always curious to find out what people mean by that, so I went for lunch. A couple of unusual things were being served, arguably New American, though mostly the menu was an eclectic American/continental one from 15 years ago. There was also a sandwich served on Armenian bread, which promised exotic cultural influences.

The most interesting item was what the menu called “smoked chicken” with raspberry sauce. It turned out to have been not merely smoked but cured like a ham, with the salty, preserved quality of ham and even something of the same lurking sweetness. Probably because of the ham quality, the raspberry sauce seemed to work better than most experiments of combining chicken with fruit.

This was not the first place in Orange County that I’ve found experiments with non-mammalian ham, but I was intrigued by the way it was cooked. It was half a bird pressed down in a frying pan under a considerable weight, to judge from its flatness and the deep brown of the crisp skin. Possibly this was another Armenian touch: In the Caucasus, flattening and frying a bird more or less whole without jointing it is quite traditional.

Another chicken on the menu was also a little unexpected, chicken breast with pasilla sauce. This wasn’t a terribly Mexican sauce, rather something like mayonnaise lying in a pool under the meat, but it did have the true bittersweet savor of pasilla peppers. The flavor was a little too rowdy for the chicken, but in absence of any other sensible handle, I was willing to call the dish New American.

Furthermore, the vegetables were not boiled to death, and the honey-mustard vinaigrette on the green salad wasn’t bad. I figured I’d come back at dinner to see Ozzie’s cut loose when it didn’t have the usual constraints of the businessmen’s lunch.

This was where I miscalculated. Usually a restaurant in the middle of a business district has a workaday lunch menu for its semi-captive daytime clientele and uses its more exotic dishes to lure customers in at dinner. At Ozzie’s, though, the situation was the reverse. There was nothing so exotic at dinner as the lunchtime chicken dishes.

OK, time to think. What did we have here? A cuisine neither fashionably New nor collectively Old, but respectably Middle, with the associated virtues and vices. The mushrooms sauteed in wine were dull, the shrimp with Dijon mustard rather good. The calamaries were bland but amazingly tender--you might mistake them for rather limp french fries. The fettuccine with pesto was rather long on pasta and short on sauce, though it was pretty good pasta.

Grenadines of beef with three sauces, that continental specialty, was made with good, tender filets, though I cannot tell you the third sauce (one and two were bearnaise and a red wine sauce). There was a decent duck with moist flesh and crisp skin, with the inevitable fruit sauce, in this case raspberry. The most daring sauce at dinner was the tart apricot sauce that c1634559264the chicken hadn’t come stone cold. (In fact, the restaurant itself was rather chilly all evening.)

But scallops Provencal was a trial, strangely rubbery scallops in a tomato and garlic sauce. Oddly, one big disappointment was shish kebab, which I’d ordered because of the obvious Armenian background of Ozzie’s. I thought it might have some special old-country touch, but it was just plain shish kebab with onion and bell pepper. It did have a genuine Near Eastern sort of pilaf with it, though, the rice mixed with browned vermicelli like a Lebanese rizz bi-sha’riyya.

There wasn’t much in the dessert line, mostly two cheesecakes, but they were rather distinctive--not the usual solid cheese masses but light and mousse-like. You could choose with blueberries or without (“New York”). Other than these, all they had on hand was a workmanlike creme caramel, but I’m sure I saw chocolate concoctions served to other tables.

New American Cuisine? Not exactly. On the other hand, it was the most sophisticated grub I’d ever watched a hockey match with (there’s a more formal dining area around the corner from the sports bar, but you have a view of the TV screens from much of it). Prices: appetizers $3.95-$6.95, entrees $9.95-$17.95.

OZZIE’S 512 E. Katella Ave., Orange

(714) 633-3280

Open for lunch Monday to Friday, dinner daily; Sunday brunch. All major credit cards accepted.