Menu Matches Atmosphere at Zabie’s Cafe

When you discover a loved-by-locals, tiny place filled with handmade food you worry that, in writing about it, the sweet staff will grow harried, the perky little touches will become self-conscious and the easy flow of people will become a torrential storm of humanity. But because it’s your job to make things public--and after all, the place is in business to thrive--you say the name aloud: this time it’s Zabie’s, a 4-month old cafe and food-to-go establishment a stone’s throw from Santa Monica Airport.

It’s your basic L.A.-goes-Berkeley place: sun-lit room filled with gnarled baskets, mounds of fresh salads, handbaked sweets decorated with gaily colored signs and people reading “The Power of Myth” or “The Art of Intimacy.” This spirit of place is portable: the food’s as lively as the atmosphere and can be packed to go home.

Zabie, a third-generation food person (Mom opened the first French restaurant in Carmel; one oncle is a charcutier in France . . .) has a wise eye for California tastes. Entrees go from simply grilled to richly sauced, desserts range from no-sugar-saintly to voluptuous, in short a menu for both herb tea and double espresso fiends.

In the cold salad department there are sweet glossy grilled peppers and eggplant at $4 per half-pound. (Zabie’s also puts this combination in a nifty sandwich with homemade sundried tomato mayonnaise painted onto a crusty baguette. Served with green salad, it’s $5.75.) If you happen to be one of those people, like me, who adore slightly burnt green beans, try Zabie’s smoky, garlicky, peanut-strewn Sichuan variety ($4.50 per half pound).

There are generally several pasta selections each day, one of the more terrific ones, a pesto with lots of sundried tomatoes, cheese and fresh basil ($5 per half pound) is as lush as they come. (If you’re in the mood for a lush sandwich, try the lightly charred grilled chicken on rosemary bread smeared with that homemade mayonnaise.)

Zabie’s uses Shelton Farms chicken and eggs and unprocessed products. The menu changes seasonally. Two dishes I wouldn’t miss if rotated out are the papas bravas , a too-dry roasted potato and cheese concoction, and the “spicy” black bean and turkey salad with too many tangents--red and yellow peppers, pea pods, cilantro--and very little spice.

Handmade focaccia comes with several toppings--cheese, eggplant and peppers or, the one I tried, for $5.50, streams of onions, tomatoes and calamata olives. The crisp golden disk is a stable foil for the savory mad pleasure on top.

There are plenty of hearty offerings including a well-seasoned fluffy meat loaf at $6 a pound; a swell, moist grilled chicken with herbes de Provence ($3.25 per piece); and vegetarian and sirloin chili at, respectively, $12 and $15 a quart.

Served with a corn bread so moist it might be spoonbread, the vegetarian chili was sweet, hot--and flat--going over like a lead pontoon. The sirloin chili, on another day and on the other hand, was well-blended, with the distinctive taste of the cut. An extremely tender chicken mole came lavishly daubed with that mysterious elixir of a sauce.

Zabie’s has an on-site baker who turns out a consistently pleasing, changing variety of desserts that generally range between $2 and $3.50 a piece. Shaker lemon pie is marvelous: tart, flaky, the works. “Very chocolate” cake is crusty and firm, chocolately but not too sweet. There are plenty of cookies and muffins, shortbread, biscotti and gingerbread men. If you don’t eat refined sugar, there’s a dried peach, prune, apricot, pear compote laced with orange juice that comes stuffed inside a rather overweight turnover shell or, even better, all by its delicious essence-of-fruit self.

If you don’t want to wait, call a half hour ahead with your to-go order. But remember that if you’re looking for Large and Standardized, Speedy and always Exactly The Same Way, you might head over to Bob’s Big Boy directly across the street.