RESTAURANT REVIEW : ‘Cheers’-Style Place Offers Huge Portions of Rich Seafood Dishes

Studio City’s Oyster House Saloon and Restaurant is a “Cheers”-style neighborhood establishment in a neighborhood where the industry is The Industry.

On one hand, the place has a classic East Coast local hangout allure: You could transport the whole dark, wood-paneled saloon lock, stock and barrel to Hoboken, N.J., or Boston, and within hours a regular clientele would start assembling inside. At its present location, however, there are no plant workers or truck drivers; instead, writers swap leads at the bar and actors slump into seats after a busy day of auditions.

The two big thugs drinking beer at the table next to us still have on eye makeup from their afternoon’s TV work. And a peppy waitress, between serving drinks and taking orders, goes table-to-table among the regulars. “I’m in a play,” she says, giving them ticket information.

Three televisions broadcast the baseball game. Two bartenders work steadily and skillfully behind the 54-foot-long bar. Business is thriving. Dinner customers sit on high stools at high tables along the wall. If all the tables are full, customers are asked to share their tables, to double up, European-style. Service is immediate and enthusiastic.

“Speak to me,” our waitress says. “You’ll feel better in just a minute,” she tells the thugs when she takes their order. “Everything is good here, all of it,” we’re told.

We peruse the menu, which is printed on our place mats, and then an addendum to the menu, which is handed out separately. The waitress comes and recites the day’s many specials. It’s a truly remarkable feat of memory. You’d have to be an actress to remember all those lines.

Seafood is the order of the day. Most dishes--from mussels to halibut--come with pasta, and almost all are well-endowed with garlic, cream and/or butter. My friend Kate scans my halibut Provencal with angel-hair pasta and her own stuffed sand dabs on linguine. “These are not small portions,” she announces. Indeed, the plates are so generous, the very sight of them fills one with a sense of well-being. There’s not a chance of leaving this place hungry. A good slice of halibut has a butter sauce with fresh chunks of tomato sauce, garlic, mushrooms and pine nuts. The sand dabs are breaded, stuffed, sauteed and sauced with garlic and broccoli and butter over linguine. Kate, who was an athlete for 20 years, says, “This is a good place for marathoners; they can eat their pre-race carbo meals here.”

Being a more sedentary creature, I find the richness of these, and almost all of the dishes at the Oyster House, ultimately too extreme. The first bite is always good, but after the next few, I feel as if I won’t be able to make a dent in my food. One is in no danger of leaving the Oyster House hungry, one is in danger of leaving cloyed. Kate pushes her sand dabs away before she is halfway through. “I don’t dare eat another bite,” she says.

The cook has a daunting propensity to mix a lot of ingredients together and to stuff and sauce with oil and butter and cream. An artichoke appetizer is stuffed with bay shrimp, scallops and whitefish in a cream sauce with melted jack cheese. The stuffed prawns are stuffed with bread and Larry’s secret seasoning, with a little bit of shrimp and fish too, in a garlic butter sauce. A quesadilla is a grilled, slightly oily flour tortilla containing jack cheese, shrimp, bell pepper and onion, topped with salsa.

Even the House Special, a hugely generous portion of tasty black mussels on linguine with white sauce, proves to be cream-rich. And the dinner salad, with the house vinaigrette, has very little lettuce--it’s all pasta and capers and mushroom slices. I’m happy to see plain, naked oysters on the half shell, which are small but fresh and good.

The Manhattan-style red clam chowder has a good zesty flavor. The bouillabaisse, a melange of seafood, arrives in a basin-sized bowl; without exaggeration, it could nourish a family of six. I find the seafood overcooked to hardness and the broth surprisingly bland: In a restaurant where garlic dominates many dishes, it is most peculiar to find no trace of the stinking rose in, or with, this dish, not even in the form of the classic bouillabaisse accompaniment, rouille , or garlic sauce.

The Oyster House’s dishes themselves--I’m talking about the crockery, now--are also something of a melange. My last dinner there came on china from other restaurants, namely, the China Club and Campanile.

Though I myself couldn’t take a steady diet of such rich food, the tables at the Oyster House fill up; the bar fills up; the doorway clogs with people waiting to be seated. The activity in the kitchen grows feverish--all the meals come off a six-burner stove. Herb, the owner, goes from table to table, greeting people. The attractive, sassy waitresses move fast, hauling drinks and food, emptying shell plates, soothing tempers, reciting the specials. At one end of the bar, a short guy makes time with a tall, curvaceous blonde. At the other end, a woman storms up to the bar and takes a seat by herself because her boyfriend has been ignoring her for the last 15 minutes. Girlfriends confide in each other. Three guys at the bar are laughing very loudly. Nobody’s dressed up. Everybody’s relaxed, sociable, just being themselves, acting out their own lives.

Home should be so comfortable.

One friend of mine, who doesn’t drink anymore, came to the Oyster House with me one night for dinner. He kept looking around and smiling. “It’s probably a good thing I stopped drinking before I found this place,” he said. “Otherwise, I’d live here.”

Recommended dishes: Manhattan clam chowder, $2.50 and $2.95; mussels and linguine, $9.95.

Oyster House Saloon and Restaurant, 12446 Moorpark St., Studio City. (818) 761-8686. Open for lunch and dinner 11 a.m. to 2 a.m. Monday through Saturday; 4 p.m. to midnight Sunday. Major credit cards accepted. Full bar. Parking available. Dinner for two, food only, $20 to $40.