RESTAURANT REVIEW : A Taste of Austria in Manhattan Beach

Barnabey’s was built before architects started talking about purity and spatial flow , and it makes the most of this fact with all the Victorian wallpaper, antique lamps and nostalgic clutter it can get its hands on. It’s sort of a theme hotel, except that it actually is pretty old.

It’s also just 2 miles south of LAX, and the Manhattan Beach hotel’s restaurant has become a retreat for heavy hitters. It’s easy to see why. There are lots of old-fashioned booths, the wonderful semi-private kind with a bit of curtain so you feel you’re in a world of your own. And for the heavy hitters, every cozy booth has a phone jack.

However, in the restaurant we should say gemutlich rather than cozy, because the cuisine is Austrian. This is unexpected but good news. Austrian food is in very short supply in these parts, and the chef at Barnabey’s, Andreas Kisler, is actually an innovator with a book on modern Viennese cooking published by Doubleday (and available in the hotel gift shop).

I must say the idea of Germanic nouvelle cuisine does not at first sound promising, and the fish terrine with lobster is exactly the sort of bland and stuffy concoction I was afraid of. It’s the exception, though, and Kisler can do a lot better. He knows vegetables, for one thing. The “Tyrolean mushrooms” are shiitake in a light lemon cream sauce accompanied by an amazing bloom of crisply fried spinach (how does he do it?).

I can argue with some things intellectually, like the taste for sweetness. The salad (full of radicchio , of course) is in a raspberry sauce that’s not at all vinegary, and the foie gras comes in raspberry sauce too, though I must admit it brings out the butteriness wonderfully. And some things are pretty strange, if tasty. A terrific veal chop comes with meat glaze and mushrooms and an “upside-down pizza,” something like Yorkshire pudding on top of a mixture of ratatouille and melted cheese.

Among the several steaks, Zwiebelrostbraten is very good, a thin steak covered with crisp onion rings, though I have my doubts about the poached steak. Kisler actually can judge a poaching steak and give it to you medium rare, but it’s odd to eat a grayish steak with no browning on it. The lack is somewhat made up for with a nice sorrel sauce.

Kisler likes game and there are several dishes involving venison steak. He also makes sausage, and I’ve had a lunch special of venison steak and mixed game sausage with meat glaze and red peppercorns . . . and an amazing rabbitburger, a rich patty of ground rabbit served on a tiny bun with goat cheese on top.

The desserts put sweet whipped cream on everything possible, and with advance notice, parties of eight or more can have devastating Viennese specialties like Kaiserschmarren , kapuziner Palatschinken and so on. There are always some good chocolate items like the warm chocolate cake, a flourless almond and chocolate Dark Tower surrounded by a lake of melted dark chocolate, and a chocolate mousse cake with a bitter chocolate exterior.

The best thing might be the cheesecakes, which are somewhat like one American cheesecake split in two. The cheesecake part goes into a strudel ( Rahmstrudel ) and the sour-cream frosting part becomes the lush filling of a lemon-flavored sponge cake.

Viennese neue Kueche in a sort of Gold Rush victuals palace. Makes sense to me. Hey, I’ll just use the booth phone here and call everybody about it.

Barnabey’s Restaurant, 3501 N. Sepulveda Blvd., Manhattan Beach, (213) 545-8466. Open for breakfast, lunch and dinner daily. Valet parking in lot on Oak Street at Valley Drive. Full bar. All major credit cards accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $36 to $80.