Carried Away With Beguiling Tastes in Malibu

Oh California. “Know where Malibu Shaman is?” the person on the phone says when I call to ask directions to Carried Away, the new “fine foods to go” shop in the Country Mart on Cross Creek. Uh uh. “We’re right between Ancestral Spirits and Indiana Joan’s.”

Well, it’s easy to find. I scoot past the little worlds of crystals and Kwakiutl masks and fall into a shop so spacious there’s even room to dance. James Brown is singing “I Feel Good.” So I boogie past the great cookie cutters (you can stamp out guitars, VWs, Tyrannosaurus rexes), past the smart crackers and carved crawfish napkin rings, right up to the showcase filled with turkey meatballs and chicken pot pies carved with hearts. Do I want to sample something? Always. I taste a Sichuan garlic eggplant so tongue-of-fire fine it knocks my socks off. Why, I feel good.

The menu couldn’t be any more classically Malibu (rosemary chicken, goat cheese and walnut salad, grilled vegetables. . .). And the prices? You know the line: If you have to ask, you can’t afford it.

OK, so the moist, mild turkey meat loaf is $10.50 per pound, but it tastes home-grown. The oil-less Cajun chicken salad, at $13.50 a pound, is clear and bright. (Delicious even if it’s more Malibu Shaman than Malibu Cajun, packed as it is with cilantro and cantaloupe.) And that chicken pot pie is only $5. Imagine a classic Midwestern flaky crust hovering over a moist chicken and potato filling so cinnamon-cardamom sweet it doubles as b’stilla .

Not everything’s worth the price. A shrimp dirty rice, at $14.50 per pound, has a complex flavor but is one part shrimp to nine parts rice. Wild-rice salad, $13.50 a pound, is full of beguiling things (tiny carrots, white raisins, garlic, scallions, green beans) that fall flat. Regardless of cost, the $11.50 a pound “spicy” pon pon noodles are pure dullsville.

But the odds are excellent here that--you know the line--you get what you pay for. Several homemade soups are available daily at $3 a cup, $4.50 a pint or $9 a quart. I loved the carrot ginger soup--buttery, grainy, piquant, delicious (and made with low-fat milk). The minestrone, packed with broccoli, corn, lots of turkey (and not one whit of salt) is an un-Italian, grandmotherly curative.

Fresh-baked country ham with a sweet, clove-studded crust makes a swell sandwich. Glazed lemon chicken ($9.50 per pound) is tart, sweet and admirable. Rapini, that upscale broccoli ($7.50 per pound), comes marinated in olive oil. One time it came crisp and green as a shamrock; another time it was overly doused. Similarly, Chinese chicken salad was overloaded with dressing.

A tasty homemade hummus, available at $6.50 per pound, comes with pickled vegetables and very fresh tabbouleh in a pita sandwich. Grilled vegetables, also very fresh, are sweet and plain. Peanut potato salad ($6.50 a pound) may sound interesting, but the largest peanuts I have seen this side of Georgia festooning the little red potato salad (chock full of scallions, parsley and bits of crisp bacon) only complicate the dish.

For dessert, you’ll find a changing array of pastries and a respectable fruit salad called “cut fruit.” Pecan-sweet potato pie, thin-crusted, light and spicy, is wonderful. A fruit cobbler--bursting with pears, plums, cherries, strawberries and raisins--looks “pizza-oid” but is actually delicious. The heavy crusted apple pie with caramel and walnuts is quite rich and flavorsome, while a butter gateau with apricot filling tasted like tough bread with jam.

At the moment you can take a meal outside and eat at tables in the gazebo. But if you want to dance in the aisles, you’d better do it before too long: Indoor tables are expected soon. And who knows? If you can’t get down to James Brown while sampling garlic eggplant, you just might find yourself going a couple of doors down and listening to consciousness-raising Shirley MacLaine tapes.

Carried Away, Malibu Country Mart, 3835 Cross Creek Road, No. 18, Malibu. (213) 456-1965. Open Monday through Friday 11 a.m.-8 p.m., Saturday and Sunday 11 a.m.-6 p.m. MasterCard and Visa accepted. Parking available.