Malibu Caterer Doubles as Fairy Godmother

Episodic television has moved from police stations and hospitals to law offices and now--a la “Tattinger’s”--restaurants. I think the take-out sitcom is next.

Picture this: an honest-to-goodness fairy godmother lands in Los Angeles and needs a front. (OK, so nobody believes in fairy godmothers anymore--and even if she did exist, the IRS would be on her case--but work with me.)

So she opens a cafe/catering business/take-out shop in Malibu at Cross Creek. Lots of groovy customers=lots of groovy story lines. The set looks like a California version of a Vermont country store. People banter. The screen doors creak. The radio’s on. There are cooking lessons going on, a stuffed gorilla in a T-shirt and a pot of fresh tomato sauce on the stove. What does she call the shop? Godmother Catering.

Her food is homey and eclectic. Her catering menu is three pages long. Her soups are made from scratch. Her frozen-food case contains crumbled brownie topping for ice cream, multiple slow-cooked sauces, full-fledged entrees that could make a man think his wife had been in the kitchen all day. (Read: lots of subplots.)

Of course, anybody familiar with Malibu knows that this is a description of an actual place, coincidentally called Godmother Catering. But, hey, isn’t TV supposed to be based on real life?

Besides, the authentic Godmother Catering is a perfect prototype for the show. Just like the real thing, our sitcom Godmother could start a catering production company, which finds exotic animals (and calligraphers), prepares food for 2,000 and intimate candle-lit dinners for two. Folks would come in for cappuccino on the patio and for sandwiches to take to the beach.

At the real Godmother, regulars know they can count on finding fresh, down-to-earth food and that the blackboard menu and deli case change daily. The simple vegetarian black bean chili’s comforting. The minestrone soup with hand-cut vegetables has a potent broth, $6.50 for a quart. A delicious white bean soup has ham falling off the bone (and doesn’t need that pedestrian frankfurter lurking between the legumes).

The salads in the case tend to look the same color--they’d have to be spruced up for TV. A white-on-white nondescript-looking chicken pasta salad turns out to be lovely with a delicate feathering of cream and fresh dill. On the other hand, a grilled chicken with julienned vegetable salad is terribly bland. The goat cheese and sun-dried tomato salad is creamy and plentiful with a good, fruity vinaigrette, but the smoked chicken salad tastes like it depends on commercially processed bird. (The Godmother’s staff’s so incredibly nice, you feel bad complaining.)

The squid salad comes with a delightful lemon zest and the grilled mustard chicken on creamy linguine is wonderful. Wild rice salad with walnuts and raisins is an oily bunch of crunch. Caponata is lightly reinterpreted with the addition of yellow squash. (The olives should pull more punch.)

The zucchini bread, baked in a tin can, tastes more like a wet pudding than bread. The cakes--whiteout, black out and other double-decker froufrou sorts--tend to be lush and found in the fridge.

Besides the soups, this fairy godmother pleases best with her frozen foods to go: the tender plain little sesame drumettes, slabs of juicy meat loaf, buttery hand-wrapped spanakopeta and tiropita , and Swedish meatballs so evocative of years past they make you want to put on pearls and a sheath.

It’s the kind of food that Lucy or Ethel or Gracie (sneaking off to spend the day learning how to cha cha cha, maybe?) would pretend that they had cooked. And except for some of the new wave goat/sun-dried concoctions, Ricky or Fred or George would probably never know the girls hadn’t been in the kitchen all day . . . unless . . . Egad! The telltale take-out containers were left out on the counter!

Godmother Catering, 23410 Civic Center Way, Malibu. (213) 456-5203, (213) 456-3254. Open Tuesday through Friday 9:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m.; Saturday 9:30 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Sunday 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Closed Mondays. MasterCard and Visa. Full service catering available.