RESTAURANT REVIEW : Country Life: A Quiet Hangout Amid the Clangor

At the corner of 9th and Figueroa streets, the Original Pantry sends out gusts of roasted meat perfume 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. No such aroma arises from the new vegetarian buffet, Country Life, located across the street.

Although it is located next to Nautilus Plus in the basement of a high-rise, Country Life seems out of place on this urban corner. The restaurant serves modestly priced fare in a bright and spacious room that feels like a cross between a health food store, a Grange hall and a library. It is, in actuality, a mix of store and restaurant. You walk in past the fresh juices and bottled waters to find yourself at a little buffet with three stations of vegetarian eats.

There’s always a big fresh fruit salad with all sorts of dried fruits and nuts and granola to sprinkle on top. There is also a green salad bar with a large selection of your typical salad bar accouterments (beets, carrots, sprouts, soy bacon bits, nothing you haven’t seen before.) Only here there are no gunked-up salads, marshmallowed Jell-O, additives or gussied up faux- crab.

The sideboard of hot meals is the thing that really differentiates Country Life from The Pantry--or from any of the other restaurants in the neighborhood. This is wholesome, nutritious fare. There is always a big helping of a warm whole grain. We tried the millet, the bulgur and the brown rice and found each cooked perfectly. There are steamed vegetables to go on top, and they each have color and bite. Broccoli and carrots were bright and al dente one day. Another time, zucchini and boiled potatoes with parsley were a world away from steam table food. Roasted potato sticks without any oil were better than most downtown French fries.

There are also casseroles, which change daily. “Provential” pasta, spirals of spinach, beet and tomato pasta mixed lightly with fresh tomato sauce and cubes of tofu was surprisingly pungent and filled with garlic. Many others, however, tend to be backwoods affairs. The corn pone pudding, a spicy blend of corn bread and kidney beans, or the brown rice with onions and sage, (a Thanksgiving stuffing taste-alike to be sure) are on the really hearty end of the spectrum, the kind of food you’d welcome after a day in the fields. A few other specialities, are best forgotten; the oatburgers, for instance, topped with millet-mushroom gravy, are really awful--in look and taste they’re like early canned meat substitutes. The soups, which include a cream of broccoli and a corn chowder--there’s one each day--are fresh and thick and nondescript.

Above another sideboard (laden with several kinds of whole wheat bread and toppings which run the gamut from garbanzo paste, tahini and creamed honey to soy butter, date spread and non-dairy caraway cheese), there’s a sign that lists prices and offers an “All You Care to Eat” special for $4.98 (lunch) or $5.98 (dinner). Notice, it doesn’t say “all you can eat.” Here’s the restaurant’s philosophy at work.

Country Life is run by a well-mannered staff of Seventh-day Adventists. Literature is put out on the tables in the dining room. I inadvertently sat down in front of a “How you can stop smoking and drinking” leaflet but moved when I saw a “Happiness Digest” across the way.

A friend and I sampled several desserts as I skimmed the booklet’s chapter called “Give Your Guilt Away.” All of the desserts have a time-warp quality. The vanilla pudding tastes like Junket. The carob tofu cheesecake with its jam-like berry topping and whipped Jell-O-like texture seems like a diet-dessert substitute. The rhubarb pie would be my country fair entry for the strangest thing I’ve had in years. Stick with the straightforward food and bypass the desserts.

This-quiet-as-a-library Country Life would make a good hideout on an ultra urban day. And give you more nutrients than a mother-packed lunch to boot.

Country Life, 888 S . Figueroa St . (213) 489-4118. Open for lunch Monday-Friday 11:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m. Open for dinner Monday-Thursday 5-8 p.m. (Store opens at 7:30 a.m.) No alcohol served. Parking lots nearby--no validation. No credit cards accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $10-$15.