RESTAURANT REVIEW : Zany Chefs, Noise Level Set the Style at California Beach

When the waiter brought rice, we knew we weren’t the only ones at California Beach who couldn’t hear themselves think. We had asked for a knife .

Come to think of it, this might be one reason why people come here: not having to hear a word anybody says because of the ear-splitting rock ‘n’ roll sound track.

But of course that’s not the main reason. California Beach is what we call an ambience , a milieu . It may actually be upstairs from the Gap overlooking landlocked Melrose Avenue, but it has a “beach” that can be reserved for parties. This is a room, partly under a transparent glass roof and partly out of doors, furnished with palm trees, surfboards, a patch of sand and a lifeguard station.

In the absence of any dangerous surf, the lifeguard station is manned only by a TV screen. Inside, there must be about 15 more TVs, 10 of them in a solid bank above the sushi bar. They’re all tuned to the same show, usually sports events, but it doesn’t much matter. You’d never be able to hear the audio over the rock ‘n’ roll, and anyway the sushi chefs are really the show at California Beach.

They have a heck of a time. They yell raucous things in Japanese, they lead cheers (or at least a kind of ecstatic grunting), they flash the lights on and off behind the tubes of bubbling blue liquid that ornament the sushi bar, they clap along to the music, they chug-a-lug beer. By the way, there’s a true rarity among them, a woman sushi chef, though I can’t say I’ve ever seen her chug-a-lug.

Even in a milieu , though, one must eat. The menu here shows mostly familiar Japanese dishes plus a couple of semi-Westernized things like shrimp with butter and ginger (quite good, but served on top of a bowl containing a lifetime supply of bean sprouts). A typed menu shows daily specials, though not terribly adventuresome ones.

In short: The clam-miso soup and the salad with ginger-miso dressing that comes with all the dinners are very good. A dauntingly rich dish called “dynamite” consists of clams, mushrooms and baby zucchini baked in an abalone shell with a sauce that seems to be mayonnaise sprinkled with shrimp eggs. The fried dumplings ( gyoza ) and cucumber-octopus salad ( otoshi ) are particularly tasty.

California Beach’s teriyaki sauce, which accompanies the skewered chicken ( yakitori , which also includes sliced potato on the skewer) and the deep-fried chicken ( kara-age , floured rather than dipped in batter) as well as the salmon teriyaki, is thick and downright sugary sweet. Some dishes come with a combination pasta-potato salad that is authentically dull except for an odd and faintly unpleasant oily aroma.

Other than that, this is your basic menu of sushi, sashimi and tempura, including, as dessert, vanilla or green tea ice cream deep-fried in tempura batter: not bad.

By dessert time, your head will ring and your eyes will be glazed over from what feels like a lifetime in this rock and neon environment. Glance out the window onto Madhouse Melrose and it will look positively quiet.

California Beach, 7656 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles. (213) 655-0123. Open for dinner daily. Full bar. Valet parking. All major credit cards accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $25-$55.