Satisfying the Palate and Sports Hunger : Fans of Athletics, Lower Manhattan and Good Service Probably Will Find Tribeca a Winner

Tribeca, 242 N. Beverly Drive, Beverly Hills. (213) 874-2322. Open for lunch Monday-Saturday, for Sunday brunch. Dinner nightly until midnight. Full bar. Valet parking. All major credit cards accepted. Dinner for 2, food only, $40-$70.

The last couple of weeks have not been good to restaurants in Los Angeles. What with the start of the football season, the end of the baseball season and various political debates, there are people who barely have time to eat, much less eat out. Count the Reluctant Gourmet among them.

“You’re on your own,” he announced recently, making it clear that he did not intend to set foot in a restaurant until the World Series had been decided (and that thereafter he would be dedicating Monday nights to the Worship of Football). On the one night I finally managed to lure him out to eat he begged me to find a restaurant with a television set.

Easier said than done. How many restaurants can you think of that have both decent food and a decent respect for sporting events? I thought so. Well, start a list. For a most improbable new place has just opened in Beverly Hills.

They call it Tribeca, after the lower Manhattan district that attracted artists when high prices forced them out of SoHo. (If you’re interested, SoHo stands for “south of Houston” and Tribeca for “triangle below Canal.”)

This Tribeca is exactly the sort of place you’d find in its namesake. (And as he settled in for one of the Mets-Dodgers games, the RG admitted that he liked being in enemy territory.) Downstairs there’s a long bar (with not one but two TVs) whose stools are occupied by the sort of people who spend a lot of money on their clothes but try to look like they picked them up in thrift stores.

Upstairs there’s a comfortable room, all black and white, with art on the walls, plants on the tables and big cozy booths along the perimeters. With no windows, no pastels, no smell of mesquite, there is nothing here to remind you that you are in California.

The Reluctant Gourmet barely had time to glance around the room, comment on the spiffy bottles of olive oil on each table and dash downstairs to look at the score. He came back up just as the waitress was pouring out a little dish of olive oil for each of us, plucking a few leaves of basil off the plant that decorated the table and instructing us to dip our bread into the resulting mixture.

I have seen olive oil served instead of butter in both New York and Northern California, but this is the first time I have seen it done in L.A. It requires the use of good olive oil; the brand here, made by a wonderful Napa Valley restaurant called Tra Vigne, certainly qualifies.

The bread, which is from Il Fornaio, is good too.

“Ah,” said the RG, re-emerging in time to dip a piece of bread into the oil and announce that the Dodgers were ahead, “this looks like it’s going to be a good evening.”

He glanced at the menu; it didn’t take long. Before it came out of his mouth I knew he was going to say, “I’ll have a Caesar salad and a steak.” I knew he was going to dash downstairs again too.

Ordering was not so easy for the rest of us; this is a large menu. And almost aggressively Eastern. The oysters from the raw bar are Apalachicolas from the Gulf of Mexico. The clam chowder is from New England, the crab cakes are from Maryland and the seafood stew is from Montauk.

The best dish on the menu is crab cakes, which is served either as an appetizer or a main course. These are light cakes--the sort that are made with big flaky chunks of crab meat instead of ground-up mush. It’s hard to tell what binds them together, but they are crunchy on the outside and very satisfying to eat. The rich remoulade that comes with them is good, if a bit unnecessary, but the decorative grilled scallion is a delicious touch.

The grilled duck sausage is another nice appetizer. It would be nicer if there were a little bit more of it.

The fried clams are odd; ideally this dish is made with Ipswich clams, which are long and sweet and tender. These seem to be cherrystones that have been dipped into a light, almost tempura-like batter and fried. The result is a very chewy clam in a very crisp coating. I actually liked them, but I suspect you would have to be a fried clam fanatic to agree with me.

Salads come in a variety of guises. I liked the arugula, baby lettuce and orange salad in its gentle balsamic dressing. A plain salad of mixed lettuces was perked up by an assertive Gorgonzola dressing. But the RG, dashing back for his Caesar salad, wasn’t impressed. “I was going to take this downstairs to eat at the bar,” he said, “but on second thought I don’t even think I’ll bother.”

But the steak, when it arrived, captured his attention. He hurriedly ate it, ate the roast potatoes and the mixture of corn, zucchini and carrots that came with it, and went down to see how his team was doing.

Meanwhile, the rest of us enjoyed a leisurely meal. The Montauk seafood stew--a big bowl of seafood and fish in an aromatic broth of tomatoes, garlic, white wine and fennel--was delicious. There was a perfectly cooked lobster (on a very small plate) and a perfectly simple veal chop with a mustard glaze. Catfish in a cornmeal coat was creamy and tender and quite delightful.

Still, there were a couple of odd dishes. Blackened turkey breast came with cranberry jalapeno relish; between the blackening and the jalapenos the taste of the turkey completely disappeared.

And grilled lamb, which came in a pepper coating, had so much garlic embedded in the meat that the flavor of the lamb simply vanished. (I did like the mint and fig relish, which was served on the side.)

Just as we were finishing up there was a loud roar from downstairs, followed by a few cheers. And then the RG reappeared, looking very satisfied. He took a big gulp of beer, never noticing that the waitress had removed his warm, half-empty glass the last time he’d gone downstairs.

In fact, the service here is remarkably discreet; without calling attention to herself, the waitress periodically replaced glasses of warm iced tea with freshly iced ones. Later I saw her quietly replacing lukewarm cups of coffee with clean, full ones.

The coffee is excellent; most of the desserts aren’t. The RG hardly seemed to notice. He ate most of a piece of lemon cheesecake without mentioning that any restaurant wanting to associate itself with New York really ought to do better.

He tasted a predictable tiramisu. And he waited, without a murmur, for the fresh baked apple tart, which takes 20 minutes. It came topped with homemade vanilla ice cream, but even without the ice cream the crust was damp and slightly soggy.

The RG didn’t care. He was in very high spirits. His team had won. He leaned happily back into the booth, and said, “Now this is my idea of a nice way to spend an evening in a restaurant. What could be better than eating a good steak in a New York restaurant in the middle of Beverly Hills while watching the Dodgers beat the Mets?”

Recommended dishes: Crab cakes, $8; duck sausage, $7; seafood stew, $18; fried catfish, $12; chocolate mousse cake, $4.