Atlas Unbound: Chic, Trendy and Mario : THE FOOD : It’s Really a Matter of Picking Right Dishes

Atlas Bar and Grill, 3760 Wilshire Boulevard (in the Wiltern Building), Los Angeles. (213) 380-8400. Open Monday-Friday for lunch; Monday-Saturday for dinner. Full bar. Valet parking. All major credit cards accepted. Dinner for 2, food only, $36-$62.

Atlas makes you feel dowdy. Then again, maybe it doesn’t. Maybe that’s you over there, throwing your vintage shawl over your shoulder, hitching up your boots and folding your amazingly long legs into that booth. If it is, you should know that just looking at you is enough to make me feel dowdy for days.

But you’re not alone. Every time I come here I watch waiters run scurrying past with drinks in violent shades of blue and red while people like you come parading into the room as if preceded by trumpets. You all look great in this spectacular room with its huge grinning gold suns, giant bent steel screens and thunderbolt lighting, and you know it. Me? I don’t come with fanfare. But then, I just came to eat.

And frankly, I’m having a hard time of it. Because I’ve learned during the last couple of months that if I choose the right dishes I’ll eat reasonably well. And if I choose the wrong ones, I probably won’t eat at all.

Consider my last visit. I started with tropical dreams, ordering shrimp and potato fritters with pineapple chutney. I thought I would see turquoise waters and feel sea breezes while I ate them, that they would bring a little romance into my life. But all I saw were cooks scurrying unromantically around the open kitchen, and all I felt were some little round fried things going into my mouth. They tasted exactly like fried stuff--any old fried stuff.

I liked the deep dish corn dumplings with garlic sausage a little better--but it was a stretch to call the dish dumplings. Baked cornmeal mush would be more like it, topped with little bits of sausage. It was tasty enough--but I kept thinking I was eating breakfast in the Deep South.

We went to a different part of the world (this menu, you will quickly realize, recognizes no international boundaries) for Indian pumpkin salad with orange and cumin dressing. It was a wasted voyage. The idea for the dish is nice enough, but the seasoning is far too timid. The flavors are bland, and the textures have a tendency to blend together so that where there should be contrast, there is none.

Brazilian seafood stew suffered from the same timidity. The flavors were muted. And the textures--everything but the mussels were a little too cooked--all had a tough chewiness that did not make the dish fun to eat.

On the other hand, a similar-seeming appetizer of steamed mussels in Thai coconut broth was completely successful. The mussels (small black ones here, in contrast to the huge green ones in the Brazilian stew) were sweet and tender. And they came in a wonderfully spicy broth in which the clear heat of chiles was balanced by the sweetness of coconut.

I’ve had other wonderful dishes here too. One night I started with a simple and satisfying appetizer of grilled Portuguese sausage skewered between little bits of figs. I liked it so much I ordered a second helping. Goat cheese and guava quesadillas seemed to me like the world’s best cream cheese and jelly sandwiches. Then I had a hearty grilled skirt steak sandwich with smoked tomatillo sauce and plantain chips, and finished off with a truly terrific Thai tea flan that struck me as absolutely inspired.

That night I walked out of the restaurant thinking that a menu as eclectic as this one creates wonderful opportunities for a chef. Given the global reach of Atlas, chef Victoria Granof literally has a world of possibilities. It enables her to take an Asian drink like Thai iced tea and turn it into flan. It is an exciting idea.

But that excitement can fade pretty quickly. On my next visit I looked down at the table where a dish called potato gnocchi with caviar and chives sat miserably before me. “This is not my idea of a good time,” I thought to myself. And there was more fun ahead. Roast chicken with garlic, vinegar and olives managed to be both greasy and dry at the same time. Steamed fish in banana leaves was merely mushy fish with muddy flavors.

Even the desserts run the gamut from the really wonderful to the truly terrible. On the wonderful end of the spectrum: a fine raspberry rhubarb crumble with cinnamon ice cream, and Snickers tarte. But mango lime parfait with coconut crunch topping is just some sweet fluff in a glass. And I can’t imagine anybody wanting to take a second bite of the chocolate passionfruit cake; in my mouth chocolate and passionfruit just don’t taste good together.

It leaves you wondering if the chef is tasting this food. How can some of it be so good while much of it is so bad? And then, of course, you wonder if it really matters.

Because once you’ve found your favorite dishes here, you’ll probably eat them again and again. You’ll come for the drinks. You’ll come for the ambience. You’ll come for the people.

When I come again, actually, it will be late at night. My favorite dish--grilled olive bread topped with prosciutto, poached eggs, garlic butter and Parmesan cheese-- is found only on the late supper menu. It’s huge, it’s greasy, it’s totally delicious. It is also an example of everything that’s best about Atlas.

The dish starts with a typical American dish--ham and eggs and toast--and quickly upgrades it with European ingredients. This big plate of food is generously served and reasonably priced ($6.95). And it is available only when Atlas is at its absolute best--in those hours when the young, the hip and the beautiful really start to arrive.

Atlas late at night is quite a place. It is filled with a lot of people who look like they just got out of bed. This can really make a person who is normally asleep at this hour feel downright dowdy.

Just eat the right thing--and you probably won’t care.

Recommended dishes: mussels in Thai coconut broth, $8; grilled Portuguese sausage and figs, $7.25; skirt steak sandwich, $14.50; raspberry rhubarb crumble, $5.50.

RESTAURANT NOTEBOOK--is on vacation this week.