RESTAURANT REVIEW : Some Dishes Exist Only in Paradise

Have you ever tried to shut a bunch of people up when they really, really feel like doing “The Hukilau Song”--complete with hula gestures? It can’t be done. You might as well join in.

This deplorable situation arose for me in the restaurant called Paradise. Here we were, under a high, steeply pitched roof done in corrugated metal to withstand imaginary monsoons, with tropical plants here and there, palm-tree designs worked into the furniture and beachcombing trinkets displayed under glass.

It’s a high-profile place, prominently visible from the San Diego Freeway just west of the Harbor Freeway, and seems to be the most interesting eatery in its neighborhood, to judge from the shower of business suits that descends at lunch time.

Its Polynesian fantasy is the modern sort, though, meaning it includes the Caribbean as well . . . and China and Mexico and Italy. Yes, Italy: pizzas and pastas. This is good news because the only appetizer that really works is the “eggplant stack,” a sort of eggplant Parmesan with thin, salty slices of prosciutto in it. The tomato sauce was a thick, concentrated one.

The rest of the appetizers are a very mixed bag. The chicken drumettes are OK, with their sweet soy/ginger dipping sauce, but rather ruined-looking. The rotisserie chicken quesadilla is tasty but soggy, the shrimp cocktail a little mushy.

But of the six-oyster appetizer--two cold with pesto, two warm with Mexican salsa and two mixed with cocktail sauce--only the shooters work because the cocktail sauce is made from tomato paste rather than ketchup.

Fortunately, entrees are a lot better than the appetizers, and once again the best of them is Italian: fettuccine with more of the tomato sauce that was on the eggplant stack, plus ground beef and hot Italian sausage full of anise and orange peel. The “pasta Chinois” is pretty good too, being chicken, pea pods and sweet peppers mixed with spaghetti and soy dressing.

The pizzas are not bad, with medium-thick crust and the usual Italian toppings (plus a quasi-Mexican one of chicken and chilies). I’ve had a decent grilled chicken sandwich at lunch, though the Basque bread it came on seemed to be ordinary white toast.

The silliest dish is called “Island Shrimp.” The shrimp themselves, crusty with grated coconut, are on the edge between serious food and parasol-in-the-rum-drinks foolishness (there are plenty of cocktails with silly names on the menu too), but the mango-lime sauce in a piece of coconut shell cannot keep a straight face at all. The most sensible dish is the excellent New York strip steak with tiny new potatoes flavored with rosemary (well, the pat of butter they put on top of the steak is probably not entirely sensible).

If the appetizers are mixed and the entrees good clean fun, at dessert time the fun turns dangerous: Everything is staggeringly rich. Banana Savannah Pie has a layer of chocolate in it and Blondie Brownie seems to be a chocolate brownie and a caramel brownie topped with ice cream and spurted with chocolate syrup.

That’s Paradise for you. A place where macadamia-crunch ice cream rates as a sobersided choice of dessert.

Paradise, 889 W . 190th St., Los Angeles. (213) 324-4800. Open for lunch Monday through Friday, for dinner nightly. Full bar. Parking lot. American Express, MasterCard and Visa accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $24-$84.