RESTAURANT REVIEW : Stale Ideas but Tasty Food at Tosh

Here for all the world to see is a California Cuisine restaurant. Does it have Art Deco-etched glass and shell-shaped lamps and an atmosphere of sun-tanned elegance? Does it serve soft-shell crabs and Maui onion tart and breast of duck with honey-cumin sauce--though not every day, because the menu changes all the time? Is it named after the owner’s dog?

You bet. This is a very good example of the genre, though I can’t say I’m positively thrilled about the dog part. The chef at Tosh is Jeff Vinion, and he has impressive California credentials: Norbert’s in Santa Barbara, Hayes Street Grill in San Francisco, two years at Michael’s. As a result, we can be sure he knows his way around a goat cheese pesto.

If anything, Tosh might be a little too California Cuisine, as if it were a lot of different California restaurants blended together. Of course, this is the sort of flaw that could only bother someone who eats out so much that boredom sets in long before the rest of the dining public even has a chance to try it. But let’s say I was captured by a gastronomically sophisticated UFO that compassionately offered to tele-transport me a dinner from a Westside restaurant. If all I had to go on was Tosh’s menu, I might have a very hard time guessing where dinner was coming from.

However, Tosh does have a trademark in the basket of fresh breads, all of which are pretty good. One is flavored with dill and other herbs, another with black pepper (reminding me somehow of the mashed potatoes of my youth). The one made with walnut is perhaps less distinctive at first, but that’s because this ingredient subordinates itself well to the excellent fresh-bread flavor.

And Tosh does have a distinctive style of dishing up entree plates: not the Japanese flower arrangement effect of a lot of California/Nouvelle Cuisine places but something rather aerodynamic: streams of somewhat thick-cut julienne vegetables that look as if they’re in motion.

Other than that, the effect is mostly of decently up-to-date exoticism. Pork tenderloin (cut into slices and rearranged, Nouvelle fashion) comes in a “barbecue sauce” that is rather Chinese in effect, more sweet than sour, with red-and-yellow pepper relish in it and probably also ginger and maybe even a bit of orange peel.

Meat is often served with fruit, of course, but in a relatively conservative way. The mango relish that might come with ahi tuna is moderately tart and not actually absurd. When duck is served with blackberries it is in a rather restrained sauce, only lightly flavored with berries (though there are half a dozen fat blackberries on the plate). This restraint bespeaks a backbone of French classicism that sometimes appears openly, as when grilled lamb or veal chops come with thick old-fashioned veal meat glaze.

Sometimes the purism of the place actually gets in its own way. If you see crab cakes on the menu, they’ll be made with nothing but crab meat in them, even if this means the cakes will be rather mushy and tend to fall apart. Still, Vinion has interesting ideas, such as a mild curry flavoring in the crab cake and a sharp Mexican tomato/onion/ cilantro salsa on the side, which goes quite well with the rich cakes.

On the other hand, I’m not convinced by the corn fritters that accompany the standard-issue Anaheim chilies stuffed with goat cheese (the new style: the chilies not covered in batter like chili rellenos , a sensible idea). They are sort of like Indian pakoras , surprisingly doughy rather than corny.

There is, of course, a pizza of the day. It might be something as technically goofy as an ordinary cheese/tomato pizza topped with barbecued chicken in a sweetish barbecue sauce: odd but irresistible. The pizza dough is rather rich, and this is even more noticeable in something like a calzone filled with cheese, Napa pate de foie gras and wild mushrooms (the mushrooms are particularly nice in this).

I suspect flavored pastas may have reached the end of their entertainment value. Originally the “flavorings” were basically colors, like spinach or tomato. Probably the use of saffron and red pepper got people thinking the ingredient added to the dough could actually flavor it, but in my experience, anything you put into pasta dough essentially loses its flavor, so the sage linguine with chicken, tomatoes and cream is just a nice pasta dish.

Desserts are a mixed bag. The so-called “disk cake,” essentially a huge brownie sliced like cake, qualifies as a guilty pleasure. I’ve had an unusual and very good peach pie with the peach slices neither raw, as in a lot of European tarts, nor cooked to pudding as in the traditional American peach pie, but just slightly cooked, on what seems to be simply a layer of thick cream.

But there are more homey and ordinary things like chocolate pound cake (made more interesting with chocolate syrup and cream). Once I had a rather odd cherry walnut pie that my waitress at first forgot to mention when she was quoting the dessert selections, and I’d forget it too: some cherries on the bottom and a rather bland and flabby layer above them where the walnuts live.

So I like Tosh. I’m still kind of put off by the dog part, though.

Tosh Restaurant, 1909 Wilshire Blvd., Santa Monica. (213) 453-3333. Open for lunch Tuesday through Friday, for dinner Tuesday through Saturday. Full bar. All major credit cards accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $40 to $75.