Cuisines of Liberation : The fare of Eastern Europe is as close as Vine Street

C hildren in Bucharest taste oranges for the first time. Geese cackle in the streets of Prague. In Budapest, pastry kitchens bustle with a vibrant hum. And in Warsaw, working-class families are putting meat in their iron pots. So as we move into the new year, is there a better way to celebrate change in Eastern Europe than with a taste of these newly liberated cuisines here?

ROMANIA

Mignon European Restaurant, 1253 Vine St., Hollywood. (213) 461-4192. Open for lunch Tuesday through Friday and Sunday, dinner Tuesday through Sunday. Beer and wine only. Parking in lot. MasterCard and Visa accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $20-35.

Mignon European Restaurant, Los Angeles’ best and most elegant Romanian restaurant, is owned by Felicia Zanescu, a Carpathian Perle Mesta who greets everyone warmly at the door. When asked why she called her restaurant “European,” she replied, “Who ever heard of Romania?” But that was last year.

Still, the mood is bittersweet at Mignon. Christmas decorations are still up, and a full-scale band plays dance music on weekends. And despite the euphoria of liberation, the changes have been so sudden, and the revelations so overwhelming, that the emigre community that frequents the restaurant sits quietly. They enjoy the native specialties, smiling reservedly and talking about the future.

Adrian Danescu, a vice president at First Interstate Bank, is optimistic. “Romanians are clever people,” he says, “they’ll adjust quickly.” Paul Florescu, a one-time urologist now in electronics, is not so sure. “I’m crossing my fingers,” he says. “Because the situation was so extreme the reaction may be extreme too.”

Romanians serve the only cuisine east of Vienna that’s so light most of us could eat it on a daily basis. Romanians are Latins, but their cuisine is Balkan. The food at Mignon is delicate, with subtle hints of Turkish, Russian and Viennese influences.

You’ll want to start with two appetizers ideal for spreading on the house brown bread: icre , a creamy dip made from the roe of carp, and vinete , a garlicky eggplant pate. Fasole , a white bean broth with dill, yellow peppers and tomato, is one of most perfect soups I’ve ever tasted. Cashcaval pane is a pungent, fried soft cheese with a schnitzel-style breading, the perfect complement for Romanian wine.

“Romanians love wine spritzers,” says Zanescu. They especially love it made out of one of the good dry Rieslings from Romania’s Tarnave Castle.

Mamaliga , a golden yellow cornmeal porridge, is the staple of the Romanian diet. At Mignon you eat it with brinza , grated feta cheese, and smitina , thick sour cream. (It’s much lighter than it sounds.)

So are wonderful sarmale , cabbage rolls stuffed with a liver mixture, and mititei , juicy, skinless sausages made from ground lamb and grilled on a brazier. The sausages are pungent, powerful fare, a perfect foil for the restaurant’s homemade pickled tomatoes. Finish with dessert crepes wrapped around sour cherries called clatite , and cups of muddy Turkish coffee.

Service at Mignon is sheer delight. Waiters speak remarkably good English (two I met had been here less than one year) and are unfailingly polite, pouring wine and brushing off tables with extraordinary grace.

And Zanescu plays no favorites. I’m told even the visiting king (in exile) was made to wait for a table on a busy Saturday night.

Recommended dishes: white caviar, $4.95; eggplant salad, $5.75; casccaval pane, $6.75; sarmale, $9.25; mamaliga cu brinza si smitina, $6.25.

CZECHOSLOVAKIA

Matuszeks Czechoslovak Cuisine, 7513 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood. (213) 874-0106. Open for dinner Tuesday through Sunday. Beer and wine only. Street parking. MasterCard and Visa accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $25-50.

“I’m an American now,” says 11-year-old George Matuszek proudly, admitting that he has no plans to return to his native Czechoslovakia. George, who serves the food that his parents cook at the family restaurant, has been in the U.S. since he was 3. “And besides,” he adds, “it’s cold over there.”

The fact that Czechoslovakia is such a cold country accounts for the heaviness of the food. Plenty of meats and gravies are consumed, mopped up with disc-like flour dumplings called knedlicky . George insisted I order svickova na smetane , marinated beef in a sour cream sauce with knedlicky and cranberries, and in doing so won my undying friendship. His mother’s dumplings were heavenly.

You might want to start with domaci pastika , a fine, fatty veal pate served loaf-style alongside dishes of mustard and pickles. You eat it with dark Bohemian rye bread, and wash it down with Pilsner Urquell, a Czech beer that is unquestionably one of the world’s finest. Another compelling starter is Prague borscht, the hot beet soup with sour cream, here in a chicken-based broth with lots of slivered meat.

Czech food is simpler than that of its neighbors, leaning heavily toward Austria and Hungary. Moravsky vrabec , from the Matuszeks’ home province of Moravia, is chunked pork with a wonderful sauerkraut.

Desserts are good at Matuszeks. They include an apple strudel (which relies on crushed almonds) and a wonderful concoction called Lidia’s sinful cheesecake, a rich, airy confection that almost floats up to your mouth. You might call it unbearably light.

Recommended dishes: domaci pastika, $4.95; Prague borscht, $3.95; svickova na smetane, $12.95; pecena kachna, $14.95.

HUNGARY

Hortobagy, 11138 Ventura Blvd . , Studio City. (818) 980-2273. Open for lunch and dinner Tuesday-Sunday. Beer and wine only. Street parking. Cash only. Dinner for two, food only, $20-40.

Light is not the word for Hungarian cuisine, the best of which still relies on lard. This gives it a rich heaviness and a gusto for which there is no substitute.

At Hortobagy in Studio City, you can experience authentic Hungarian cooking; no compromise, no fear, no vegetable oils. I cannot eat this food often, but when I’m in the mood I can think of nothing more satisfying.

Hortobagy is modest. Tables are stuck together mess-hall style, with a few booths for the lucky against a rear wall. You don’t have to worry about eavesdropping, because most of the conversation is in Hungarian.

The food is csodalatos --sensational. My unquestioned favorite is disznotoros , the farmer’s plate, which includes hurka , a grilled sausage filled with a liver and rice stuffing; kolbasz , a red sausage redolent of garlic and paprika; smoke-flavored stewed pork in massive white chunks and a heap of roughly mashed potato with chopped onion.

Another dish that won’t make it onto La Costa’s menu this year is the restaurant’s paprikas csirke , the classic chicken paprika. Pieces of chicken are cooked in lard with sour cream and paprika and served over tiny flour dumplings. Have it with the pungent house cucumber salad, or red cabbage flavored with caraway seed.

Surprisingly, the most famous Hungarian dish of all, goulash soup, is by no means as hearty as other dishes. It’s really a light beef broth with potatoes, carrot, dumplings and boiled beef. The kitchen actually uses very little paprika in their version.

I consider Hungarian desserts the best in the world. Hortobagy doesn’t do anything to change my mind. Try the chestnut cream torte, the crepes with apricot and crushed walnut, the seven-layer chocolate squares. . . .

Recommended dishes: farmer’s goulash soup, $6.15; farmer’s plate, $9.85; Hortobagy wooden platter (serves two), $23.80; Hungarian crepes, $1.50; chestnut torte, $3.65.

POLAND

Warszawa, 1414 Lincoln Blvd., Santa Monica. (213) 393-8831. Open daily for dinner. Full bar. Parking in lot. All major cards. Dinner for two, food only, $40-$60.

Of all the people I met last week, Adam Kowalski, a Pole living in the San Fernando Valley, summed up the general feeling of Eastern Europeans best. “I always knew we would be free someday,” he said with mild disbelief, “but I didn’t think it would happen so suddenly.”

Warszawa (pronounced Var-schav-ah), is the best place to celebrate this sudden freedom. That is because it is the best Eastern European restaurant in Los Angeles. A converted house with a series of small, intimate dining rooms, it offers service performed by an all-Polish staff and food that is extraordinarily refined and appealing.

Begin with ryba w galarecie , fish in a delicately seasoned aspic, or watrobka po Polsku , a delightfully rich liver pate.

As a second course, the combination salad plate is one of the best dishes I’ve had anywhere: pomidorowa , tomatoes and scallions with warmed Polish goat cheese; warszawa , an arresting compote of sauerkraut, apples and carrots; mizeria , cucumber, lemon and dill, and z czerwonej kapusty , red cabbage with leeks and walnuts.

Main courses include kaczka z jablkami , one of the city’s best roast ducklings (all crispy skin with dumplings and spiced apples); kolduny , tiny lamb dumplings, a dish said to have originated in Lithuania, or placki , wafer-thin potato pancakes served with dried plums.

Don’t miss the restaurant’s Polish aperitifs or after-dinner drinks, either. Zydnia is icy-cold rye vodka downed from a shot glass. Krupnik is a mead-like liqueur.

Among Warszawa’s wonderful desserts is one compelling choice, deser solidarnosc. This is a poached pear placed amid two dramatically contrasting sauces. One is a white thick vanilla cream sauce, the other a red cranberry kisiel (a thickened fruit sauce made with potato flour.) Solidarity colors! How could any patriot, Polish or American, think of ordering anything else?

Recommended dishes: ryba w galarecie, $5.25; combination salad, $7; zrazy, beef roulade, $14.95; kolduny, $14.75; kaczka z jablkami, $17.