RESTAURANT REVIEW : Noodles Has the Formula; Falls Short in Execution

If you believe the manager at Noodles, Glendale now has an answer to Spago. “Pasadena has the Parkway Grill, the Westside has Spago, but, until now, there was nothing like that here,” he proudly told me.

Indeed, Noodles is a clattery, high-volume, California-style, post-modern-industrial trattoria where people can get a good look at each other and eat fashionable food. But Spago it’s not. It’s more California Pizza Kitchen: a pre-proven, timely concept brought to life. Just add customers.

And, sure enough, around noon, the tables fill with pinstriped bankers, white-coated dental receptionists, lunching ladies, office workers by the tens and twenties. At night, there is the movie crowd--moviegoers, that is, not movie makers.

“They sure are nice here,” says the friend I bring for lunch. “The staff here is really nice,” says the friend I bring for dinner. And, without exception, the hard-working, fast-moving waiters and waitresses make up one of the best-natured crews I’ve come across. Considering that their job is to process a high volume of hungry people, these servers maintain remarkably good attitudes.

The wide-open kitchen, too, processes food. There is no chef, let alone a Wolfgang Puck in sight, only a system. Young men, not dissimilar to those seen in fast-food restaurants, man the grill, sauce the pastas, toss the pizza dough and shove pizzas in and out of the wood-burning oven. It’s cooking by formula and, in their hands, the formula is still being perfected. One young man pulls my calzone from the oven and instinctively blows on its smoking hot spots.

Yet much of Noodles’ “California Cuisine” is pretty good, especially as an alternative to tuna-stuffed tomatoes, grilled cheese sandwiches, three-egg Denver omelets and other conventional ‘70s lunch-spot fare.

The house rolls, knots of pizza dough rolled in butter and herbs, are tasty, but would be far better if served hot or even warmed-through. The fresh tomato and basil appetizer is fine: We’re glad it doesn’t come on escarole, as promised on the menu, and surprised that mozzarella is smoked--but have no problem cleaning the plate. The mushroom caps stuffed with prosciutto-wrapped scallops are cute and tasty, although the smaller scallops get a little tough and dry when cooked as long as their big brothers. We also like the avocado and crawfish, but more for the ripeness of the avocado and the good, sherry-spiked remoulade sauce than the flavorless crawdads.

Although I couldn’t find all five crisp cool greens said to come in the mixed green salad, I like the Caesar-style dressing and garlic croutons and would endorse this salad over the Italian-style chopped salad. The latter tastes like those antipasto salads you sometimes find in college pizza joints: a mishmash of lettuce and non-meat pizza toppings.

Pizza and pasta are Noodles’ long suit. A fettuccine with salmon-mousse-stuffed shrimp is a wonderful surprise, certainly far better than it sounds. The first dish of a shallot and garlic linguine is great: The shallots are roasted to caramelized perfection, the garlic blanched of too much staying power and the butter-cream sauce ladled on with a light hand. A few nights later, however, this dish comes out swamped in sauce, inedible for its richness.

The tomato-basil spaghettini is OK, but a better tomato and a better olive oil could have made it excellent (at $5.50, however, we won’t complain too much). The scallop and crab ravioli with a tarragon-mustard sauce is an unfortunate example of wrong-headed “unique” combinations that make people in Michigan mock our state’s cuisine: The sauce completely overwhelms the poor, delicate seafood-stuffed pasta. I noted that, like me, other diners transferred the ravioli to their bread plates to scrape the sauce off before eating them.

The plate-sized, wood-baked pizzas have good, chewy crusts and come with a wide variety of toppings, from fresh tomato and basil to barbecued chicken. Our favorite is the Cajun shrimp pizza with andouille sausage, red onion, bell pepper and sauteed okra, the last a surprising and inspired touch. The Peking duck pizza, on the other hand, is another study in haywire eclecticism: A cloying Chinese hoisin sauce replaces standard tomato sauce, mozzarella and fontina cheese go on as usual, and strips of flavorless Peking duck are the meat topping--it’s ghastly.

Our best-natured waitress, Jenny, enthusiastically recommends the fajita calzone. When punctured, this chicken-burrito-in-pizza-dough releases a tantalizing steam fragrant with cilantro and onions. But the chicken, onions and peppers are way undercooked, which is a pity, for this could be a fun and tasty dish. As it is, I disassemble the whole huge thing (a difficult task given the small plate it comes on), hoping to find one sufficiently cooked bite.

“Grilled accompaniments” are side dishes of protein served with a very vinegary giardiniera . A good piece of salmon is overcooked and dry; the marinated skirt steak, although nicely rare, comes with a too-sweet black bean and ginger sauce, and the juicy duck sausages taste only like the herbs they’re seasoned with.

Except for a good apricot tart, the desserts, too, are disappointing. A hefty slab of chocolate cake is salty (!) and glued together with a weirdly resilient frosting. The ice cream is grainy. The creme caramel is unevenly cooked and curdled one time, gluey the next.

I suspect that all the menu items tasted great back in the test kitchen. Now that the recipes are systematized and put in the hands of young, non-professional cooks, anything from over-saucing to under-cooking takes place. A manager ranges at the pick-up counter serving as a kind of food traffic controller, getting the plates out, making sure they look like they were designed to look. But nobody seems to be tasting the food on a regular basis.

Noodles may not be Spago, or even the Parkway Grill, but the prices are affordable, the food’s pretty good and the service is certainly pleasant.

Noodles, 215 N. Central Ave., Glendale (818) 500-8783. Open 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Sunday-Thursday, 11 a.m. to midnight Friday-Saturday. American Express, MasterCard and Visa accepted. Full bar. Reservations accepted for six or more. Dinner for two, food only, $15 to $40.