RESTAURANT REVIEW : Salisbury: New Taste, Old Touch

This can’t be L.A. We don’t have fortress-like houses with Romanesque stone facades and vast bulging bay windows. The enormous Moreton Bay fig tree out front must be 100 years old, and we all know nothing’s that old out here.

But we’re not back East, we’re in a forgotten downtown neighborhood known as West Adams that was a sort of Beverly Hills at the turn of the century. The house in question, Salisbury Manor, is a designated historical building adoringly restored in Victorian style as a restaurant.

What would you serve in an elegant, old-fashioned place well off the beaten track? Salisbury Manor’s answer is interesting: a mix of light, elegant California stuff, traditional Americana and customized Continental.

The salads and appetizers, in particular, are on the California side. For instance, delicate crepes with a little granular layer of Gorgonzola cheese between them, some salsa spread on top. Dark green asparagus, crisp and just barely done, with a surprisingly peppery salsa.

On the entree side, though, the chicken crepe filling has a very American taste, like chicken pot pie filling minus the peas and carrots. The black pasta lobster ravioli sounds exotic, but the lobster sauce on it tastes surprisingly like American cheese. It’s also oddly tasty, though I doubt I could eat it very often.

You might actually find something as homey as meat loaf, and not a nouvelle meat loaf with corn in it, either. Salisbury Manor makes the exact meat loaf my mother made, with onions and bell peppers in it, topped with a “spicy tomato sauce” rather like ketchup.

The rest of the entree list is more likely to seem French-Continental. The pan-fried trout, and very fresh trout it is, may sound American but it’s so heavily peppered it’s practically trout au poivre . Chicken ballotine , chicken wrapped in chicken skin and poached, has a fascinating, elusive spice aroma. Filet mignon comes in a red wine garlic sauce, a bit like a simplified marchand de vin sauce with garlic instead of shallots, not terribly reduced.

There seem to be quite a few Southwestern touches, or maybe that’s just because of Cinco de Mayo--Salisbury Manor is enthusiastic about holiday motifs. The cold poached salmon at lunch comes with jalapeno and lime-flavored mayonnaise, the fish on the mushy side but quite pleasant in the sauce.

There’s a spectacular almost-flourless chocolate cake at dessert time. This concentrated little bullet of chocolate flavor is best ordered with the creme anglaise and raspberry sauces. Interestingly, the creme anglaise , ornamented with the de rigueur chocolate spider-web patterns, is arranged on top of the raspberry sauce.

A huge concoction known as raspberry cloud is good in its operatic way, two layers of sponge cake filled with raspberry mousse and topped with bitter chocolate. The white chocolate pecan pie is more or less like a thick pecan-filled butter cookie frosted with white chocolate. There’s a nice apple pie, an OK praline cheesecake, and a pious mango sherbet for dieters.

Not everything works here. The corn soup is so light and mild that it’s downright watery. The idea of using dried tomatoes to make sauce seems to be a mistake. The result is like a particularly crude tomato paste, sweet and mushy, and it does nothing for the ravioli.

But the place sure is charming, and very useful for downtown dining. And really, you’d never guess you were in L.A.

Salisbury Manor, 1190 W. Adams Blvd., Los Angeles. (213) 749-1190. Open for lunch Wednesday through Friday; for dinner Wednesday through Saturday; for Sunday brunch. Beer and wine. Parking lot. American Express, MasterCard and Visa accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $30-$55.