Main Course: Grandma Cooking at Its Best

It is true that the Main Course is only a short hop from 20th Century Fox. And it’s true that the “Moonlighting” crew often picks up its goulash, lamb stew and cabbage rolls there. Still, it was too central-casting perfect to wander into this “Just Plain American Food Mom’s Way” take-out cafe and find three generations right there.

A pink-cheeked little granddaughter was doing her homework beside her mom, owner Ilona Foyer, who was doing the books. Behind the counter was a country-plump grandma stirring the real mashed potatoes and heating up the honest-to-goodness chicken soup.

You are welcome to sit at one of several tables and eat your food there, but most of the business is geared, as they put it, to “take away” dining. Foyer says most of her customers are professional people who are just too busy to cook. Many take home full meals several times a week.

In addition to the four steadfast dishes available daily (stuffed cabbage rolls, beef goulash, roast turkey and roast chicken), Foyer’s formulated a weeklong menu with two different specials each night. “People want to feel there’s some consistency in life,” she says. “They like to show up, say on Tuesday and know they’re going to have Irish lamb stew.”

While there is a small selection of cold dishes (including a too-bland Chinese chicken salad, a stellar turkey-noodle-garlic mayonnaise combination, and a tuna salad laced with bits of scallion and green pepper), the central focus at the Main Course is precisely that: the main dish.

Grandma--who is Hungarian--knows her way around a drippings pan. The roast turkey is wonderfully moist; it is served with a thick bread and parsley stuffing, steamed vegetables that still have bite and mashed potatoes that clearly come straight from spuds. Roast chickens are very plain and very tender. (Just slightly underdone, they won’t dry out when you bring them home and heat them up.) Beef goulash is a big, chunky affair; the potatoes and carrots are still holding their own and, happily, the fragrant gravy has been de-fatted. Stuffed cabbage is extremely gentle: filled with rice, onions, veal and beef, it’s grandma cooking at its best.

We loved the Monday-night turkey soup. (Filled with rice and lots of the big bird, the rich broth base alone is well worth the $2 price.) Leg of lamb was tender, the light lamb gravy washing gorgeously over the thick bed of rice. I’d like the chicken paprikash to have more zing: three hearty pieces were served with a great mound of tiny egg dumplings that hardly made a dent in the great river of creamy (but too mild) sauce.

This is what used to be called he-man food (but these days even Cybill Shepherd--who occasionally stops here after work--likes meat) and most desk-bound people don’t eat these farm-sized, gemutlich meals every day. Still, reed-thin dancers from the Stanley Holden Studio a few doors away wander in regularly for fresh sliced turkey on a home-made whole wheat roll and cups of vegetable-packed soup.

I would advise against ordering the turkey chili and turkey meat loaf combination, served on Fridays, unless you’re playing tackle football that night or particularly like the shredded texture of chicken croquettes. If you feel that home cooking is a signal to scoop out the inside of a pie and leave the crust, then by all means try the light and genuine-pumpkin pumpkin pie. But if you want really good crusts--you’ll have to find them somewhere else. The Main Course’s pastry is suitcase thick and just as bland. Stick with Grandma’s enormous main course servings. And her stick-to-the-ribs soup.

The Main Course, 10509 West Pico Blvd., Los Angeles ; (213) 475- 7 564. Open Monday-Friday, 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Mastercard and Visa. Parking in rear. Dinner for two, food only, $15-$24.