A Bar and Frills : The Brentwood Bar & Grill is no small neighborhood joint

Brentwood Bar & Grill, 11647 San Vicente Blvd., Brentwood. (213) 820-2121. Open for lunch Monday-Friday, for dinner nightly. Full bar. Valet parking. All major credit cards accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $50-$88.

The only low-key thing about the Brentwood Bar & Grill is its name. There’s a bar all right--a roomful of bar that looks like the perfect place for a hot singles scene. And there’s a grill as well--three of them--in the half-million dollar glassed-in kitchen that is framed like a work of art in the back of the dining room.

Then there’s the dining room. It is an impressive place that looks like millions went into it. And they did-- at least three million--to make this square dark room with low black leather banquettes, faintly lit yellow walls and capacious, widely spaced tables. It is a power room filled with the discreet murmur of diners who seem to be doing important deals. Money is in the air--you can sense it from the wine cellar that occupies one corner of the room and the thunk of the wine list as it hits your table. They may call this a bar and grill--they may even serve hamburgers--but one look around the room will tell you that anything served here will be a burger with a bang.

We’ll get back to that burger. Right now we’re looking at the dinner menu. And there’s a lot to look at. Every appetizer sounds terrific. How do you choose between yellow Finnish potato and onion tart with limestone lettuce, black truffle salad (that’s one dish), and grilled shiitake mushrooms with smoked mozzarella, roasted red peppers and a small salad with balsamic vinaigrette (that’s another)? The mesquite grilled shrimp with garlic, vegetable spaghetti and ginger sounds fabulous--but then so does osetra and salmon caviar layered with chopped shallots, eggs and chives on wild rice blinis. I’m having a hard time ruling out cracked Dungeness crab and avocado with vine ripened tomato, but I also like the sound of those three sauces served with the chilled Pacific oysters. And there is more . . . .

Choosing among the entrees is even harder. The three grills allow the kitchen to simultaneously fire oak-grilled lamb chops, mesquite-grilled steak and charcoal-grilled swordfish. But grilling is only a small part of what this kitchen does: The chef is Joseph Miller (of Cafe Katsu fame), and his entrees include dishes like New Zealand snapper with crisp potato scales or steamed halibut with buckwheat noodles, braised leeks and oyster sauce. And how can you pass up a duck tart with port wine black truffle sauce?

The answer: Easily. For this is a menu that promises more than it delivers. Some of this food is truly delicious, but much of it reads better than it tastes.

That cracked crab, for instance, came out looking like “tomato surprise,” a dish that magazines used to feature in the ‘50s. And those seductive-sounding wild rice blinis beneath the caviar were so small--and so buried beneath a thick filling of chopped eggs and shallots--that they might as well not have been there at all. The dish reminded me of another ‘50s favorite, caviar pie, a little trick that enabled my mother’s friends to stretch a tin of caviar far enough to feed a crowd. But the biggest disappointment was the shiitake mushroom dish: It turned out to be a single large and tasteless mushroom filled with goopy and not very flavorful melted mozzarella surrounded by a few greens and a couple strips of marinated pepper.

There was nothing disappointing about the oysters, however. They were zesty and delicious, and those sauces were even better than they sounded. Fresh tomato and horseradish was a welcome change from cocktail sauce, the mignonette of shallots and vinegar was lovely, and fresh lime jolted with a little jalapeno turns out to be the perfect topping for Pacific oysters. The potato-topped onion tart, a variation on the Alsatian flammekueche, was a nice dish and the little sticks of truffle sprinkled over the accompanying salad added an appealing touch of luxury. As for those ginger-grilled shrimp, they were simple and delicious.

When it comes to the entrees, take the restaurant at its word and think grill. As in grilled Muscovy duck breast steak. This brilliant dish is a thick chunk of duck breast that is treated like a steak-- grilled rare, simply served and not cut into silly little slices as it is in most American restaurants. The fire-crisped skin provides an added fillip of flavor. I liked the steaks too--both of them. (There is a tenderloin served with roasted shallots and a New York served with salt-roasted potatoes.)

But there were lots of things I didn’t like. Costa Rican sea bass had been grilled into toughness, and steamed halibut was merely mushy (although I did like those well-buttered soba noodles). The snapper with its potato coat--a dish that is fast becoming a cliche of French cooking--didn’t have a lot of flavor. Oak-smoked Maine lobster wasn’t impressive either--for $28 we got half of a very smoked and very small lobster served with artichoke chips that had been cooked until they were crisp and bitter.

As for that duck tart. . . . It turned out to be confit of duck in puff pastry, a sort of Pop tart for the 18th Century. The dish offered two rich and fatty textures in juxtaposition; it needed some sort of contrast to bring the flavors into focus.

Desserts provide just that sort of contrast. A homey banana cake, which threatens to be a little too sweet, is served sitting in a slightly puckery passion fruit sauce with an exotic tropical sorbet on the side. The richness of chocolate cake with walnut sauce is cut by the espresso ice cream that is served with it. An angel food sandwich arrives looking exactly like the white bread sandwiches of your childhood. Bite into it, however, and you discover that the bread is actually angel food cake, the filling a rectangle of vanilla ice cream. It’s white and sweet and rather bland--but there’s a lemon cream with berries on the side to give it a little bit of tartness. I found the dish totally charming.

Now about that burger. . . . It’s on the large lunch menu along with dishes such as crispy squid salad (the squid are cooked in tempura batter so that they are really crisp, plunked onto a bed of lettuces and topped with a sort of Caesar dressing), black tagliatelle with seafood, and a number of sandwiches. It’s made of ground sirloin. There’s a lot of it, along with a heap of herb-sprinkled shoestring potatoes. And it is brought by some of the most professional waiters and waitresses in town. (Service here is wonderful.)

But is it served with lettuce on a bun? Not this burger. It comes sitting on a bed of arugula, thank you, wedged between two slices of grilled focaccia. Should you want to make it even more aristocratic you can have it embellished with Roquefort or roasted peppers-- or both. Once again the chef has demonstrated his inability to leave well enough alone. Joseph Miller is a very talented young chef-- but he desperately needs editing. He still believes that more is better.

Perhaps he has just fallen victim to the Brentwood syndrome. After all, in a community where a multi-million dollar establishment can pass as a bar and grill it behooves a burger to be upscale.

Recommended dishes: Pacific oysters, $10; potato and onion tart, $10; grilled shrimp with vegetable spaghetti, $11; grilled duck breast $22; New York steak, $27; angel food sandwich $6.