Engine Co. No. 28 Finally Up to Speed : Long-awaited downtown restaurant is beginning to live up to its billing

Engine Co. No. 28, 644 S. Figueroa St., Los Angeles. (213) 624-6996. Open Monday-Friday 11 a.m.-10 p.m; Saturday 5-10 p.m. Full bar. Valet parking only at night. Visa, MasterCard and American Express accepted. Lunch or dinner for two, food only, $25-$55.

It looked as if Engine Co. No. 28 would never open. For years I’d heard that the landmark 1912-era firehouse in downtown Los Angeles was going to be remodeled into a restaurant. Superchef Joachim Splichal was even rumored to be involved--he was going to make affordable food. Then he was out, and nothing seemed to be happening. The construction site began to seem like another appendage of the downtown mess. The restaurant, most figured, would open along with Metro Rail.

And then, late in January, the massive old firehouse doors finally swung open. Was the restaurant worth the wait?

It certainly looked as if it had been. The place was handsome--a real big-city restaurant with walls that soared 16 feet high to meet a pressed-metal ceiling. Businessmen stepped smartly across carpeted floors to sip martinis at the bar while they surveyed a domain of mahogany and padded booths.

The firehouse theme was so impressively underplayed that if you didn’t look carefully you might miss the holes in the ceiling through which the firemen once descended. (The brass poles are gone.) Even a pair of ceramic Dalmatians standing guard at the front window managed not to be too cute. In fact, the clubby room had such a settled look that were it not for the absence of that venerable old-grill aroma of mingled smoke, roasting meats and after-shave, it would be easy to believe that the restaurant had been around for years.

At least until you sat down to eat. For no restaurant serving the food I ate at my first dinner at Engine Co. No. 28 could possibly have survived that long.

The menu itself was not the problem: It fell right into the trendy New Traditionalism of modern restaurants, offering the straightforward American fare that everybody seems to want to eat these days. I began with a prawn cocktail--a hard dish to mess up. But the prawns were mealy and tasteless, as if they’d sacrificed their flavor to the melting ice water they must have been stored in. Chili--hardly a great gourmet feat--was a cute little dish, served with a separate bowl of beans and little triangles of fried bread. It was a meaty, chunky stew with only one drawback: It may have been the worst chili I have ever tasted.

A spinach salad was even worse. It was as soggy as a swamp and tasted so sad that after a first forkful nobody ventured a second.

Our main courses were not much better. A hamburger, which came sandwiched between two thin slices of bread, was served with Bermuda onion, a handful of good French fries, red cabbage slaw, three kinds of mustard and a pickle. Everything seemed right. Everything, that is, except the flavor, which was nonexistent.

A veal chop didn’t have much flavor either. We ended up devouring the excellent bread, drinking a few bottles of delicious Cold Springs beer and waiting for dessert.

And then even the hot fudge sundae proved disappointing. It came with ice cream, a cherry and an upscale sprinkling of pistachios. All well and good. But it was lacking the one thing you really want in a hot fudge sundae--lots of fudge.

Can this be the great new downtown restaurant we’ve all been waiting for?, I wondered gloomily. Would the kitchen improve?

It was a month before I went back for a second dinner.

The room was just as handsome as it had been, but now there was an added element. It was buzzing with noise and people and anticipation; it had the look and feel of a thriving business. “Don’t get your hopes up,” I said to my guests. “There are so few nice restaurants downtown, that if the place is pretty enough people will overlook the food.”

“But there’s nothing wrong with this,” said one guest when his green salad arrived. It was an understatement: the salad was perfect--a fine toss of crisp greens, each leaf lightly touched with a lively dressing. “Hey, these are terrific,” said another guest, eating his Firehouse oysters with such dispatch that I barely managed a bite before they disappeared. The mollusks arrived sitting on a bed of rock salt, and beneath each oyster was a bed of minced sausage. On top of each was a spoonful of salsa and a light layer of melted cheese. I know the dish sounds improbably baroque, but it was so good we considered ordering a second plate.

“You probably won’t like this,” said another eater, “but I think it’s delicious.” He was eating a beautiful scallop ceviche -- thin smooth slices of marinated scallops surrounded by a circle of diced avocado and papaya. I liked it a lot.

But I did not like my own dish. As I stuck my fork into a dry chopped vegetable salad I said, “This is one of those depressing dishes that tastes like it’s good for you.” The mixture of wild rice, scallions, carrots, celery, fennel, carrots and red peppers looked lovely but tasted like it came straight out of a health food restaurant.

My friends were not sympathetic. “Complain all you want,” said one, eating a grilled tuna salad that she described as “what I’d like to eat every day for lunch.” It was an interesting concept--strips of slightly charred tuna sat on a bed of mixed greens in a lemony dressing. Scattered across the salad were slices of deep-fried ginger, which gave the salad a vaguely Oriental air. She was echoed by the halibut eater, who was now half-way through a thick moist slice of fish. “This is as good a piece of fish as I can remember,” he said. Then he eyed my plate with what I considered suspicious interest and added, “you seem to like your dish, too.”

Short ribs aren’t ordinarily a big favorite of mine, but this was an elegant version of the dish. A long thin strip of meaty bones was drenched in a rich brown gravy and accompanied by a puddle of mashed potatoes and braised baby carrots and onions. It was American food at its best.

And that, for the most part, is what the kitchen at Engine Co. No. 28 is now producing. Order lamb chops and you get a couple of hefty, flavorful chops served with a head of roasted garlic. Order a large salad and that’s exactly what arrives in a big brown wooden bowl: a salad you can sink your teeth into. The sandwiches are hearty fare, and I have to admit that the hamburger, tried again, was really quite respectable, more like one you’d make at home than the sort of thing you are normally served in a restaurant.

There are still some dishes that the kitchen hasn’t quite mastered. The chicken pot pie, served as a special one week, was sadly lacking in chicken. Somebody needs to rethink that dry chopped vegetable salad. And as far as I’m concerned, the chili is still among the worst I’ve tasted.

But why dwell on that when there’s dessert to be eaten? True-blue American sweets that seem to be straight out of a church social. Strawberry shortcake is a big plateful of berries topped with a shortbread biscuit and a mountain of whipped cream. Lemon meringue pie sits proud and tall. Chocolate cake is the kind you’d take on a picnic; dark and moist--it has no frosting and is simply dusted with powdered sugar. And if apple pan dowdy is really nothing more than a cheater’s pie, who could possibly resist that name?

Engine Co. No. 28 is finally open. And it looks like it will be around for a while.

Recommended dishes: Firehouse oysters, $6.50; mixed green salad, $4.50; grilled tuna salad, $9.50; broiled halibut, $13; braised short ribs, $13.50; strawberry shortcake, $3.95.