RESTAURANTS : Langan’s Makes the Jump From London to L.A.

Langan’s Brasserie, Stratton Street, London. Telephone (01) 493-6437, 491-8822. Dinner for two, food only, $40 to $85. Langan’s Brasserie, 10250 Santa Monica Blvd., in the Century City Shopping Center, Century City. (213) 785-0961. Open for lunch and dinner daily; weekend brunch. Full bar. Valet parking. American Express, MasterCard and Visa accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $38 to $75.

Monday: “Yes?”

“Have I reached Langan’s Brasserie?”

“Yes, sir?”

“I’d like to make a reservation for dinner on Thursday.”

“You would.” Her tone implied this was the most staggeringly peculiar request she had ever heard. Well, OK. Langan’s is the hottest show-biz restaurant in London; Michael Caine is one of the owners. It’s right next to the top show-biz hotel. One expects to endure a certain amount of grief to eat there. Nevertheless, I got the reservation.

On Thursday I took the precaution of bringing three genuine British subjects to Langan’s.

We had a glimpse of a glittering room full of bright, talkative people surrounded by masses of oil paintings arranged higgledy-piggledy on the walls: Our reservation was for the upstairs Venetian Room, which proved to be decidedly more sedate, though also full of paintings arranged higgledy-piggledy.

“It looks like all Americans up here,” one genuine Englishwoman said of the customers. She seemed disappointed at not being able to ogle British celebrities I probably wouldn’t have recognized.

A look at the menu, written in French. An odd mix: Continental food, which is what most fancy London restaurants serve, with occasional bits of informal English grub like the working-class dish of cabbage and potatoes fried together, which is called bubble and squeak.

Then we discovered that spinach souffle, the dish that Langan’s is famous for, isn’t served in the Venetian Room. Presumably the souffle would collapse in the additional 20 seconds it would take to bring it up to us, or maybe it was all a plot to keep us in our place.

However, the Venetian Room does have a masterful specialty in roast leg of lamb sprinkled in herbs and garlic bread crumbs, served from a cart with an immense silver cloche, which just possibly the glittering celebrities downstairs don’t get.

There was also wonderful venison, far meatier and more authoritative than the bland New Zealand venison a Californian is likely to be used to. Mostly, though, the menu was Continental stuff like mussels topped with spinach and cheese, sometimes getting as exotic as fried salmon with tarragon-basil hollandaise.

Vegetables were all a la carte, and since it was asparagus season we had five spears of asparagus with hollandaise for something well over 10 bucks and a reputed asparagus soup that was mostly potato, raw cream and chives. Far more interesting (though our waiter tried to talk us out of it) was “sea asparagus,” actually a wild seashore vegetable called samphire. It was crunchy, salty and slightly spicy, with a clever topping of shredded radish.

On the English grub side, the bubble and squeak turned out to be rather fancified, a neat wedge of light-textured potato and cabbage mixture. I liked it. My genuine English guests pronounced it inauthentic. “Proper bubble and squeak,” they said, “should be day-old.”

One of the desserts was treacle tart, which the genuine English people said was properly made, though the very idea drove me walleyed: a tart shell filled with nothing but sugar syrup, which dries and crystallizes a little in the baking. The genuine English people were also impressed to find there was summer pudding, a naive equivalent of charlotte that consists of bread squashed with berries so that it becomes soaked with the juices.

They concluded it was not a proper summer pudding, though. “The fruit’s not squashed enough,” complained one. “It should be soggier.”

“Yes,” said another. “Really, it should be day-old.”

“Can you pronounce everything on the menu?” one employee asked of another in an unguarded moment.

This was at the recently opened Los Angeles Langan’s, which has a lot in common with the London original: most of the same owners; the same huge, underutilized bar; the same higgledy-piggledy display of paintings (here they include some plump Ashcan School nudes and some circus clowns with a puppy).

But it differs from the original in some important ways. It’s in Century City’s shopping center, rather than next door to a show-biz hotel, and consequently welcomes all sorts of non-show-biz shopper-diners who may not realize that the jovial boss, Peter Langan, is a celebrity himself (this may be why a Hockney portrait of Langan dominates every menu). And despite the employees’ worries, the menu doesn’t use a lot of French, because the fare is somewhat conservative California rather than Continental.

There’s also a bit of informal English grub, including bubble and squeak, as a matter of fact. I considered myself a bubble and squeak expert by the time I went, and Los Angeles’ bubble and squeak is funkier than London’s, crustily browned top and bottom and tasting of bacon grease. However, this authenticity was badly undercut by the fact that it came swimming in French-style veal glaze, which was there to bolster the ostensible center of the dish, a little roast quail.

There’s even “London fish and chips,” blessedly inauthentic with its tarragon-scented tartar sauce (there’s brutal English malt vinegar too, if you insist). The “chips” are our most up-to-date, ultra-skinny L.A. shoestring potatoes, along with a shrimp, an onion ring, a surprisingly delicious stalk of celery and a green onion, all in crisp tempura batter.

The rest is unapologetically Californian: meaty grilled pheasant sausage in chestnut sauce. Luscious goat cheese rolled up in a sheet of pasta with marinara sauce. Chicken nage --pieces of chicken, some carrots and a “parsley ravioli” (a sheet of pasta with some flattened parsley leaves visible inside, like bees in amber), all floating in butter. A tiny bit of beautifully cooked lobster with a faintly mustardy dressing on a salad of curly greens. A rough and satisfying sandwich of roast beef and melted provolone with red onions and sun-dried tomatoes.

In the best California style, the L.A. Langan’s cooks things rare whenever possible. Salmon comes rare and delicate, flavored with lemon and coriander sauce. The best entree might be the unpretentious-sounding chicken breast with eggplant terrine, which they like to cook medium rare. This mad zeal for cooking things rare must explain why my club steak with Cabernet sauce, which I had ordered medium rare, came cool and purplish-red in the center.

A couple of things don’t work at all, though. Putting a sauce of funky Italian mascarpone on veal means you could as easily be eating tofu. For some reason, monkfish, a fairly bland fish to begin with, is subjected to a red sauce that oddly has a strong taste of black pepper.

They make a great berry cobbler here, with a real cobbler crust like biscuit dough. They can also make a real American cherry pie with fresh cherries, or an actual English steamed chocolate pudding with an amazingly light, softly grainy texture. But I didn’t get the point of a salty Stilton cheese tart with a bottom crust I could barely cut with a knife, or a tiny baked apple that was decidedly underdone (we definitely didn’t ask for it medium rare), and I can’t imagine why anybody would want to make a creme caramel (cajeta) with goat cheese, though the caramel sauce was OK.

London is not L.A. Block-long Stratton Street is not the mighty Century Marketplace. Continental Cuisine is not California Cuisine. However, I choose to believe that the spinach souffle at Langan’s in Century City--very pleasant, though rather salty, almost as salty as the terrific anchovy-garlic sauce--is the same as the one served in London, because it saves me going back to London and trying to make another reservation there.

Recommended dishes: London fish and chips, $9.50; grilled chicken breast with eggplant terrine, $13; fresh berry cobbler , $5.50