RESTAURANTS : TRIP TO SPAIN IS OUT? GO EAT AT TOLEDO

I am not the sort of person who forces friends to look at slides of my vacation in Spain, mainly because I don’t own a camera. They do have to hear, however, about what I ate when I was there--the meltingly tender little baked octopus that looked like rag dolls an ant might play with; an exotic breed of lobster, its thorny armor protecting the sweetest, tenderest meat; fabulous desserts--who ever heard of Spanish desserts?--particularly a creme brulee at the Grand Cafe in the old city of Barcelona that defined that dish, and, in the seaside town of Sitges, a whiskey cake--layer of ice cream, layer of yellow cake, thin middle layer of toasted almonds--saturated at the table by a hard splash from a bottle of booze.

There was fresh, fresh fish, wonderfully gritty cheese, smoked Iberian ham--Spain’s gutsy version of prosciutto--and what was that thing floating in my soup that looked and even tasted somewhat like a cigar butt? Blood sausage--delicious! In an outdoor cafe on a foggy Mediterranean day, there was a wonderful, intensely flavorful steaming-hot paella (a tide pool with rice, one friend calls it) accompanied by a fine bottle of Spanish wine; in Madrid, a white fish underscored by a delicate green sauce that tasted like the tomalley of a lobster but was, from what I could gather with my no-Spanish and a friendly Spaniard’s halting English, a moss that grows by the sea, a clump of which accompanied the fish, deep-fried.

There are, of course, several Spanish cuisines, depending what part of the country you’re in, and not a taco in sight (many people expect to find Mexican food in Spain), all of it made with olive oil fine enough to satisfy the most exacting yuppie. One common feature seems to extend throughout, however: This is not a nation afraid of garlic.

Now, back home and in the daily grind, the whole thing--coffee and croissant on my balcony overlooking the sea, days in the sun, leisurely lunches, siesta, dinners at 10 p.m., an hour after the late Spanish sunset--seems like a dream. But one way to keep the sense of vacation alive has been to find Spanish food here in Los Angeles.

And so to Toledo in West L.A., a dark, double cave of a place with beamed ceiling from which hang ferns, plastic grapes, an imposing chandelier, canvas sacks supposedly containing legs of smoked Iberian ham. On the the walls hang oils of Spanish grandees, bosomy senoras ; in the fireplace at night glows a light bulb behind a sheet of red cellophane.

Toledo is, in decor and cuisine, the Spanish equivalent of the good old reliable red-sauce Italian restaurant--heavy-going. The truth is, though, that the Spanish people have donned sweat shirts and Reeboks and, like the rest of us, can be seen early mornings doggedly jogging the boardwalks and city parks, and many of their best chefs have gone nouvelle, letting fine ingredients shine through lighter sauces.

Not so at Toledo. Monkfish and red snapper were nice and fresh, but both were drowned in a heavy--if deliciously garlicky--tomato sauce. Sauce on a nice tender rabbit was as floury as the binder in chicken a la king.

With the appetizers and tapas and desserts, though, I had no complaint. The Iberian ham was the real thing--dark, chewy, with the almost gamy--yet delicious--rankness of a good cheese. Slices of chorizo tasted like pepperoni with oomph; fried hunks of blood sausages melted in the mouth, sinfully rich.

And the garlic! Garlic soup was garlic-lover heaven, stocked with toasted bread and egg, rich with the taste of the good stuff. Shrimp in garlic sauce perfumed the air with enough garlic to clear out a room of squeamish debutantes. The garlicky tomato sauce on the steamed mussels demanded to be sopped up with bread. (The mussels themselves, though, were a disappointment after the fresh, tender fellows served in Spain. These New Zealand monsters were tough as leather, seeming to get bigger in your mouth the more you chewed.)

Fried squid, tripe stew, kidneys in onion sauce, clam with green sauce, baby eels with garlic and hot peppers and dried cod will have to wait for future tapas raids. On visits made so far, it was on to those heavy entrees and to some very fine desserts--a very intense creme caramel, a lighter flan sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon, and best of all, a tarta manchega, a concoction of orange peel, Grand Marnier and cream, which seemed to have transmogrified an orange into a sweet, heavenly wedge of pie.

A warning though: Tapas, cheap enough in Spain, can run into money here at $3 to $7 a dish, so that, with a bottle of Spanish wine or glasses of sherry, you might find yourself with a bill for $70.

It’s cheaper than air fare to Spain, though.

Toledo, 11613 Santa Monica Blvd., West Los Angeles. (213) 477-2400. Lunch served only on Friday, dinner served Tuesday-Sunday. Wine and beer only. Parking in lot. Visa, MasterCard, American Express accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $35-55.