RESTAURANT REVIEW : Stitches Dishes Up the Right Prescription for the Palate

W ee- oo, wee- oo, wee- oo, here comes another ambulance. We’re across the street from the emergency entrance of County-USC Medical Center, having dinner.

The place is named Stitches, and yes, the waiters do wear green operating-theater tunics. Yes, there’s a tangle of scarcely unpacked plastic tubes behind the counter, so when somebody draws a Coke you see syrup moving around like blood in an I.V. unit. A bottle of liquefied CO2 lies next to it, as if left there by an absent-minded anesthetist.

Some of this might be accident, but Stitches does seem to have a little fun with its situation. We certainly can’t blame it. Not every restaurant has to endure the apocalyptic wail of a siren every few minutes.

But the place is not just a gag. Stitches is a real resource for this restaurant-poor neighborhood, where the hamburger otherwise rules. You see doctors and nurses wander across the street at all hours, obviously pleased to vary their cafeteria diet.

And for visitors to the hospital, it must be a real comfort. A plate of linguine can get you through a lot of anxiety.

Technically it’s just a lunch counter with a beer and wine license, but Stitches has a more sophisticated style than you’d expect. On the wall you find a Miro print and a Patrick Nagel poster. Hot rolls the size of walnuts, dripping with garlic and olive oil, come with many entrees.

There are evident signs of health-consciousness. Garlic abounds, and chicken is definitely the specialty. Probably the best entree is grilled chicken breast with “garlic slivers,” which are thin slices of garlic cooked quite brown, perfumey and sweet. The best of the pastas is chicken Alfredo, made with rather wide noodles (like egg noodles, rather than fettuccine) and broccoli and the occasional bit of dried tomato.

The chicken sandwich is a grilled breast in thick, sweet teriyaki sauce (and some Thousand Island-type secret sauce) on a whole wheat bun sprinkled with bran. It comes with some home fries that define, or even redefine, the genre: slices of potato fried very, very casually (and often quite brown) with the occasional bit of onion or bell pepper. You might think it Army chow, until you notice that it’s made with delicate new potatoes.

The pizzas follow the thin-crust school, easy to handle and of a fresh cracker flavor. The fairly short list includes a barbecued chicken pizza (there’s also a chicken sausage pizza for hard-core chicken fans), which was what I actually got when I asked for the Roma tomato, garlic and basil pizza. It wasn’t bad as barbecued chicken pizza goes, with a sauce that was at least not stupefyingly sweet.

Sometimes Stitches tries its hand at Cajun food. The only attempt I’m familiar with is an odd “seafood gumbo” that was really a good pepper-hot tomato broth with celery and an odd papery substance with bits of red coloring--probably surirmi, or imitation crab. Not what I’d call gumbo, but not bad on a cold day.

One thing I know that Stitches has a monopoly on in its immediate neighborhood is calamari pasta. The linguine is colored black with squid ink and served in a light white wine (and garlic) sauce with bits of squid. Unfortunately, the squid itself is a little mushy and overdone.

The heavy focus on chicken cannot be accidental, because Stitches doesn’t specialize in meat. The most expensive thing on the menu is the flank steak, but though it’s pretty tender (apart from a tiny rind of gristle), it’s not very flavorful. Nor is it a very big portion, but maybe the doctors prefer it that way. In any case, it’s vastly overpowered by the vegetables (boiled rather than steamed, but usually not badly overcooked) and salad (with garlicky vinaigrette, natch).

The least successful thing I’ve had here was a pork-chop special. The grilled, not barbecued, chops were served with a candy-sweet, palate-numbing sauce that could kill the flavor of anything. But then these cotton-dry chops didn’t deserve a lot of mercy to begin with.

And you really wouldn’t come here for the desserts. Apparently, none of them are made on the premises. They’re merely honest commercial pastries from the cheesecake/apple pie/chocolate chocolate list.

Stitches has a monstrous parking problem. You have your choice of all-day lots that charge a flat $5 rate and tend to fill up anyway, or potluck parking on the street. Things seem a little slow in the late afternoon and evening, and there’s a happy hour from 3 to 7 p.m. with a pitcher of beer and a pizza (one topping) for $8.99.

So it’s not Spago. Stitches is still worth knowing about in this part of town. What do you want across the street from Emergency Admitting?

Stitches, 1927 1/2 Zonal Ave., Lincoln Heights; (213) 222-0221. Breakfast, lunch and dinner 9 a.m.-9 p.m. daily. Beer and wine. Street parking; parking lots in neighborhood. No credit cards. Dinner for two, food only, $15 - $30.