Azuma’s <i> Cuisine Spontanee</i> Featured at Chabuya

Tokyo is sprinkled with “little” French restaurants, places the size of a rabbit hutch run by young, rebellious, Paris-trained Japanese chefs with a healthy disdain for the conventional workplace. In recent years, the phenomenon has spilled over the Pacific Rim into Los Angeles, bringing with it a unique style we like to call Franco-Japanese. Now, some say, the trend is waning.

It’s true that the almost-legendary La Petite Chaya, L.A.’s first practitioner of the style, closed its doors last week. And trend watchers nodded their collective heads when pioneer innovator Matsuno Tadayoshi packed up and moved his little Lyon from its unprepossessing midtown spot to Pasadena, breaking hearts and shattering loyalties. People began to say, “We knew it couldn’t last.” Well, hold the last rites.

Lyon’s former site has been given a face lift, renamed Chabuya and reopened under new ownership. The new chef, Elmer Azuma, may bristle when he hears his food called Franco-Japanese, but he did work at Paris’ Trois Marches and Le Petit Bedon, a pair of two-star constellations in the Michelin milky way, he does use Japanese cooking techniques throughout his menu and, well, he is Japanese. Azuma prefers to call his food cuisine spontanee , which does have a catchy ring. Let’s compromise and call it irresistible.

The truth is that Chabuya is a better restaurant than Lyon ever was, despite appointments that are strictly anti-establishment. It’s still a counter place (now there are 15 stools instead of 17), but the light seems brighter, the mood more starkly modern. Spartan comforts, like fine Mikasa bone china and Tosa tsumugi (gorgeous place mats made from materials used in kimono) look almost out of place, like linens on a picnic table; ultimately Chabuya has a feel that is more hamburger than haute . It’s only the brief and sumptuous menu that lets you begin to make sense of the place. Then you realize that there isn’t a floorboard or a light fixture that has not been carefully thought out by Azuma.

I fell in love with the very first thing I tasted here, a cross-cultural marriage of Vietnamese and Japanese flavors. Halibut sashimi , capers and radicchio were arranged artfully on a platter, marinated with a lime vinaigrette and five Vietnamese herbs, then served with a sweet dipping sauce and rice paper crepes. We were instructed to wrap it all together like an arcane form of burrito. It’s unlike anything I’ve tried before, and I was instantly seduced.

I was similarly enthusiastic about the sweetbreads. Normally I find sweetbreads impossibly rich, but Azuma sautes these until they are crisp, adds browned leek, julienned red peppers and crayfish, then dumps sherry vinegar on it all. Finally he frames the dish in a light tomato concasse . The result is electrifying. These are, in my opinion, the two best dishes on the menu.

The next best appetizer (main courses are rudely upstaged here) is a caviar-topped raw scallop salad, marinated in olive oil and saffron, hiding little clumps of ratatouille , and flanked by crayfish and mushroom toasts in a balsamic herb vinaigrette. The dish may sound a bit precious but, magically, it works. Even a comparatively tame dish of grilled pesto shrimps and scallops works well here, despite the presence of a mushy fennel puree with an ambitious dose of olive oil.

Chabuya’s main dishes, while well above standard, are never inventive or risky. The best of them is a gravlax -like salmon preparation, a beautiful, barely singed hunk of trimmed salmon, looking majestic in a green moat of herbed sauce made from a chive puree. No. 2 would have to be filet mignon in a terrific fond de veau with shallots, topped with some gratuitous and tired reconstituted morels. My advice would be to eat your way down Page 1 of the menu, though, before even considering the alternatives.

Chabuya has a complimentary cheese plate, with little chevres , loads of Brie and the usual up-market yuppie cheeses. But do try dessert as well, for the few desserts here taste far better than they look. Chestnut mousse in a yellow sponge cake and apricot almond flan are the standouts.

A beer and wine license is expected in early December, so until then the house refrigerator has been propitiously stocked with Evian, which is poured free upon request. Evian, can you imagine? Couldn’t they have chosen something less trendy?

Chabuya, 3360 We s t 1st St., Los Angeles, (213) 487-2904. Open for lunch Monday-Friday, for dinne r Monday-Saturday. Street parking. No credit cards accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $40-$60.