RESTAURANT REVIEW : Off Vine: Highs, and Lows of Hollywood Style

A shark is diving through the roof of a plain clapboard house. Is it a motif? A metaphor? Something to write about in a restaurant review?

It might just be a ready-made topic for a restaurant review. Of course, the shark does happen to be the main clue that Off Vine is a restaurant. If it weren’t for its tail projecting from the roof and the impact pattern painted around it on the shingles (plus a discreet magenta neon sign on the front of the building), Off Vine would look just like any other house on this quiet residential street.

But consider: Inside, Off Vine is a comfortable, homey sort of place, and the menu has a certain reassuring quality. There’s a New York steak with Jack Daniels sauce, really rather good, the sauce not mawkishly sweet as you might expect from the bourbon. Little loin lamb chops come in a pureed herb sauce of very green color and very subdued flavor, and three-cheese ravioli (actually, capelletti ) in a very little bit of garlicky wine sauce.

One appetizer has a vaguely avant-garde sound, but turns out to be flamboyantly retrograde, scallops in puff pastry with a lot of irresistible butter sauce. There are a couple of old-fashioned butter sauces around, come to think of it, such as the one with leeks in it on the chicken with an egg-and-herb stuffing. The so-called “shredded potato pancakes” are an awful lot like the old-fashioned potato basket, though browned to the limit and maybe a bit beyond.

But this is Hollywood--indeed, Off Vine is located just around the corner from Sunset and Vine--and these are wacked-out gastronomic days. There is always the possibility of health and/or California influences infiltrating, possibly even through the roof.

Sure enough, the menu is full of the words “sun-dried tomatoes,” and the pastas tend to have a certain California quality, as in a special of angel hair with salmon and goat cheese, a perfectly acceptable combination that was bound to happen.

A sweet red pepper is stuffed with ricotta and capers, with a couple of unexpected treats on the same plate: asparagus in honey mustard sauce, a disk of French goat cheese on a bed of cilantro/red pepper sauce. And look at this, a “mushroom carpaccio “ of mushrooms pleasantly marinated in vinegar, arranged around a mound of polenta that tastes as if it’s actually made with American hominy grits (I do notice that when you order this, the waitress writes “mush”).

There’s a hamburger on the menu at both lunch and dinner, but it turns out to be a turkeyburger. It’s exceptionally good, as turkeyburgers go, and the sauces--Dijon mustard, hot chile mayonnaise and a barbecue sauce-like catsup--make pretty good sense with turkeyburger. But the waitress points out the health benefits of turkey-eating, and there’s spinach instead of lettuce. Spinach isn’t awful on a turkeyburger, but I think I see a dent appearing in the ceiling, as if made by some blunt snout!

No, there’s nothing there. A lot of old houses just look like that. I should relax with the nice old-fashioned desserts, particularly the wonderfully crunchy blueberry crumb cake. It really is good, and makes me proud that I never bought into that obvious shark thing.

Off Vine, 6263 Leland Way, Hollywood. (213) 962-1900. Open for lunch Monday through Friday, for dinner Monday through Saturday. Beer and wine. Street parking. MasterCard and Visa accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $28 to $63.