RESTAURANT REVIEW : Rustic-Style Barbecue at the Bear Pit

One of the neat things about the San Fernando Valley is that within a mile or two of its northern rim it turns into something like Oklahoma, a dusty land of roadhouses, lucky horseshoes and chicken-fried steaks, of scrubby hillsides and the clean shadows cast by unfiltered desert light.

If the southernmost Valley is a late-model BMW well-stocked with Tracy Chapman CDs, parts of the north is a Buck Owens-blasting pickup; if Ventura Boulevard culture includes a rock lounge where the waitresses wear zebra-striped bodysuits, north culture includes what is still probably the most famous country and Western bar in the world. (In fact, the Western in country and Western largely developed around here.) If you squint hard enough, this is what the American Dream looked like 35 years ago.

There are places to eat straight out of a Sam Shepard play: Mom ‘n’ pop truck stops and original-issue diners, 24-hour steakhouses and blinking neon drive-ins, seedy cantinas waiting for a fistfight to break out. Even the fancy joints haven’t caught radicchio fever yet.

And then there’s the family barbecue in Mission Hills called the Bear Pit, which is a time-capsule version of the sort of rustic-themed restaurant that California used to be famous for, half a century before anybody ever thought of putting goat cheese on a pizza.

Floppy cartoon bears cover the walls inside--wearing tattered chef hats; chewing on straws; named things like Beaner Bear and Li’l Salty--and pig-size plaster bears stalk the planters. The bear-infested menu lists Hambear Burgers and Grizzly Bear Treats, and describes the Family Dinner as Gobs of Palate-Ticklin’ Bar-B-Q Meats. If you ask the waitress for a pitcher of beer, she sighs and asks, “Is Hamm’s all right?” as if she’s been told too many times that it isn’t. (The motorized sparkling canoe scene on the vintage Hamm’s sign is spectacular.)

Neon outside identifies the Bear Pit as “Missouri-style,” but not the Missouri of the famous, funky rib pits in Kansas City or St. Louis, the Missouri of kitschy restaurants in the Ozarks, imported hillbilly fun cleaned up for the tourists. (Picturesque mountain poverty was probably goofier in the ‘50s, a time when hillbilly tunes were driving the Big Bands off the charts, a time before CBS White Papers.) The guy who thought up Country Bear Jamboree for Disneyland could well have done so at the Bear Pit, over a Hungry Bear Delight or a couple of Kodiak platters.

You get coleslaw with your meals here, slightly spicy, or iceberg lettuce salad with ranch dressing. You also get Loads of Taters, which are deep-fried cylinders of potato the size of “C” batteries, Bar-B-Q Beans sweet enough to pour on pancakes, and Our Famous (albeit limp) Garlic Toast. Or you could turn to the Snacks and Vittles section of the menu and get onion rings instead.

Of course, Ozark hillbillies were noted more for their colorful grammar than for their cuisine.

If you grew up in white suburbia pre-Tony Roma’s, you grew up on take-out barbecue like this: bland, a little greasy, and kind of delicious in spite of itself. “Dern Tootin’ We Cook With Wood,” the menu says, and they must--you can see great piles of it out in the parking lot--though you can’t really taste it much in the meat.

Beef ribs are the best, sweet and meaty with a charred coat; spareribs, though not as crisp as they could be, are nicely caramelized; chicken is a tad dry; steak, ordered rare, comes gray. The Polar Bear Delight (“Pard, This Is Real Eatin’ ”) gives you spareribs plus a choice of gray sliced beef, grayer sliced pork, pressed turkey or ham. Skip the sliced meats. And strangely enough, the Bar-B-Qued Duckling, Tasty and Tender, is: crisp-skinned, almost without fat, and set off by a shmear of something like a cross between barbecue sauce and marmalade. Queer, but good. And Dern Tootin’ the Place Is Fun.

Bear Pit, 10825 Sepulveda Blvd., Mission Hills, (818) 365-2500. Open for lunch and dinner seven days, from 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m., MasterCard and Visa accepted. Beer and wine; parking in rear; takeout and catering. Dinner for two, food only, $10 to $20.