Joss: The Next Stage in Chinese Restaurants : From the decor to its menu to the Sunset Boulevard prices, it has a style all its own

Joss, 9255 W . Sunset Blvd . , West Hollywood. (213) 276-1886. Open for lunch Sunday-Friday; for dinner nightly. Beer and wine only. Valet parking. All major credit cards accepted. Dinner for 2, $35-$70.

Chinese restaurants come in three basic styles. You know them all. The no-frills style is still the most common. This is basic storefront simple where the bowls are thrown right onto bare tables and piles of paper napkins sit surrounded by little glass flasks of soy sauce. So many restaurants fall into this category that it is hard to separate the good ones from the bad. One rule of thumb: if you have to ask for forks the food is probably pretty good. If you have to ask for chopsticks, it probably isn’t.

When restaurants are decked out in ancient China elegance you shouldn’t have to ask for anything. In this style of restaurant the chopsticks are imitation ivory, the forks are imitation sterling and the plates are genuine china. The waiter is probably wearing nicer clothes than you are, and the food is probably predictable. The prices, you can be sure, will be high.

Hong Kong glitz is the latest style to come to town. Most often found in Chinatown shopping malls, these are huge restaurants featuring shiny chandeliers, private rooms, huge menus and banquets on demand. You will probably think that the best dishes appear only on the Chinese menu--and you will probably be right.

And then there’s Joss, which has a style all its own. The look is almost aggressively modern: When you walk in the door you are confronted by a whole army of wine bottles sitting on a bar. Then you walk into the dining room and find yourself facing a bank of little lamps hanging on wires and functioning as both light and sculpture. Only when you see the chopsticks does it become clear that this is a Chinese restaurant.

It is, in fact, a Chinese restaurant that combines certain elements of every Chinese restaurant you’ve ever known. And adds a few new touches of its own.

Consider, for example, the menu. It’s not exactly your basic lo mein list. It’s filled with esoterica like venison marinated in Quei Hua wine and soups made out of Muquaa melon. And when was the last time you ate “nuts of olive mellow”?

But you don’t have to order strange nuts and wines to get a measure of this kitchen. Some of the familiar dishes here are so good they seem new. Crab-filled won tons in spicy Sichuan chile and garlic sauce are so seductive that I’ve had little chopstick battles over them. Minced squab, served in the usual lettuce cups, turns out to be a particularly appealing version of the dish.

Slices of eggplant are surprisingly delicate. The vegetable is steamed and then chilled before being rolled up into elegant little cylinders and doused with a mildly spicy garlic sauce.

Even fried tofu--one of those deceptively simple dishes that is deadly when done wrong--can be perfection. Each cube of bean curd arrives in a crisp, tightly fitting coat that is so dry you’d hardly guess it has been fried. It is a little textural treat for your mouth, the very blandness of the bean curd emphasizes the contrast between the creamy interior and the crisp coating.

But the star of the first courses is pot stickers filled with Peking duck. For here is an innovative dish that provides a play on texture. It is a wonderful notion: Pot stickers are delightful because they have one crisp side and one soft side. Peking duck offers a similar contrast between the crisp skin and soft flesh. Putting the one inside the other is a fine way of combining two delicious foods.

Peking duck itself--served whole--is one of the stars at Joss. It is served in the usual manner: carved into crisp slices at the table and wrapped up in little pancakes. Another dish that Joss does with real authority is whole steamed fish, which comes to the table perfectly cooked.

One of Joss’ quirks is a menu that tends to truly florid description. “An understated symphony of seafood flavors,” is what it says about South China Neptune. Description aside, the dish is startlingly good. It is nothing more than sauteed fish in a very mild white ginger sauce--the sort of dish that most restaurants fill up with cornstarch and serve up as a bland and overcooked concoction. Here it is so carefully cooked that each separate kind of fish has its own texture. Scallops are slightly chewy, shrimp has a bit of bite, filets of fish are silky beneath the teeth and the squid is scored with a knife and cooked into chewy little pine cones. It is a pleasure to eat.

But there are disappointments too. Lots of them. The glazed venison, which arrives in a clay pot, might be any meat in its sauce of ginger. Tangerine spiced beef lacks authority. Kung pao chicken is ordinary, garlic and black bean crab claws are stringy, and too many sauces seem similar. And what might be a wonderful dish of cold Chinese cabbage in a peppery vinaigrette is bland, dull and costs an outrageous $7.50.

Disappointments here are a particular blow for this seems like one of the few Chinese restaurants that strives to transcend the ordinary. It has set itself up on a chichi corner of the Sunset Strip and proudly charges prices that are the equal of any of its neighbors. It has an impressive wine list, a talented chef and what appears to be an inventive menu. But that menu just doesn’t go far enough.

Chinese food--as it is cooked in places like Hong Kong, Taiwan and China--is the most exciting food on Earth. Although our Chinese restaurants continue to get better and better, we have yet to have a single one that gives the cuisine its due. Judging by many of its dishes, Joss has a kitchen capable of opening our eyes. And yet from the hundreds of thousands of dishes in the Chinese repertoire, for the most part Joss is satisfied to stick with the familiar.

Recommended dishes: dim sum appetizer, $7.50 per person at dinner; crab-filled won ton, $11.50; fried tofu, $4.50; Peking duck, $38; South China Neptune, $16.50.