RESTAURANT REVIEW : Bonhomie Compensates for Kitchen

Where do two restless, hungry, dressed-up single women want to go on a Thursday night in Sherman Oaks? Stanley’s, of course. Kate and I drive over, only to find that all the other dressed-up restless have beaten us there. Stanley’s is so crowded that we are asked to wait outside until the inside waiting room becomes available.

It’s too cold to stand around in nylons and miniskirts, and we’re too restless, so we take a walk and find ourselves down the street at Cafe Cordiale, which is also doing a spirited business. There’s no wait, we’re told, for the smoking section. We’re too hungry to pass it up. Moments later, we have a warm table and are busy filling up on hunks of hot Italian bread.

The decor is a little corporate--pink linens, gray walls, store-bought posters: Cafe Cordiale most resembles an upscale, trendy coffee shop. Its menu reads like an encyclopedia of every ‘80s food trend: pasta, pizza, dim sum, satay , risotto, blackened this ‘n’ that, Maui onions . . . . There’s a bar here, too, and a lounge area, and, although there are two women sipping white wine and a lone man with an algae-green Midori, I don’t sense much of a bar scene. Still, Cafe Cordiale is a very comfortable, casual . . . cordial restaurant with a lively mixture of people of all ages.

At our little table, squeezed between two other tables along a banquette, we are so close to our neighbors that we can’t help but overhear their conversations. On one side is a complainer: “I hate the takeout food you find these days.” On the other side is a confider: “I was crazy for him,” she says. Reading the diverse menu, let alone conducting our own conversation, requires great concentration.

As eclectic and trendy as the menu appears to be, the food at Cafe Cordiale is more familiar than not, and often very ordinary. The mixed green salad isn’t, for example, mixed greens: Except for a token shred of radicchio, there’s nothing but good old romaine in it--no oak leaf lettuce, no mesclun, no trace of lettuce infanticide. The cream of asparagus soup is a thick puree with a few stringy stalk-ends of asparagus floating in it. Our favorite appetizer is the fried dumplings: Light and well-spiced, they come with a head-clearing mustard and a snappy sweet-and-sour sauce.

A pasta special, angel hair with chicken breast, asparagus and mushrooms, is winy and pretty good except that, again, the asparagus is all stalk--I find one nubbly tip section in the whole dish. Kate’s sauteed shrimp are garlicky and cooked to hardness, but she has a swell time dipping the garlic bread in the butter and cream sauce. After-dinner cappuccinos are very good.

When we return for lunch a few days later, burgers with fries and salads in big glass bowls are rolling out of the kitchen as fast as the waitress can carry them. Of the blackened swordfish salad, which comes with butter, lettuce and more asparagus stalk, Kate says: “I’d come in and eat this any time.” The veal and turkeyburger is hefty and well-dressed with perfectly grilled Maui onions. On the other hand, a risotto, made with basmati rice, is inedible: Coated with tomato sauce and melted mozzarella, it tastes like rice pizza or, more accurately, like dried oregano, of which it contains handfuls.

The service is rushed at times. But the waitresses, even as we nag them for butter, ice water, salad dressing, are staunchly good-natured.

If I think of Cafe Cordiale as a fun, unusual, better-than-average coffee shop, I don’t mind the lapses in cooking so much. It’s a good, basic, friendly place to go for a bite to eat, to be among fellow humans, to seek refuge when there’s no admittance to the hot spot up the street.

Recommended dishes: fried dumplings, $4.95; blackened swordfish salad, $9.95; veal and turkeyburger, $7.25.

Cafe Cordiale, 14015 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks. (818) 789-1985. Open for breakfast 9 to 11:30 a.m. Saturdays and 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sundays; lunch 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Mondays through Fridays, 11:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturdays, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sundays; dinner 4 to 10 p.m. Sundays through Tuesdays, 4 to 11 p.m. Wednesdays and Thursdays, 4 to 11:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays. Parking available. Full bar. American Express, MasterCard and Visa accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $14 to $40.