RESTAURANT REVIEW : Occasional Pleasures Not Worth Price

Hey, where’s Gourmet Gourmet? It was here just a while ago.

Gone. Its pretty little mini-mall location became a Mediterranean and Armenian place called Armen & Salpy’s last year.

It still looks much the same, though, as when it was a self-styled California cuisineria, something of a fern bar and very much a ladies’ lunch spot. The walls are still stark white with blue trim; the same pastel watercolors still hang on them; the same oak furniture inhabits the dining room.

Armen & Salpy’s has set out to turn this slightly fancified space into a moderately priced dinner house, but one gets the sense that even after a year, they still don’t quite feel at home. The big blue wine rack taking up one full wall is almost empty. The dining room feels cut off from the rest of the restaurant. The territory may be occupied, but it’s not yet fully claimed.

My friend Annie and I went there for dinner one night and found ourselves in the hands of a friendly but strangely unfocused young waiter. He answered our questions and took our order, but gave a sense that he couldn’t quite bear to be in that dining room and wanted the serving process over and done with as quickly as possible.

We might have taken it as a bad sign, but the appetizers were relatively nice: a half order of a lentil salad called mujaddara and some eggplant crepes.

Served on a very small plate, the small amount of otherwise unremarkable lentils was topped with delicious crisp-fried onions. The crepes proved to be spinach and pine nuts rolled up in strips of cooked eggplant. They were tasty but a mystery: Why, oh why, should they cost $4.95?

Annie’s entree was a quite good, spicy grilled orange roughy. I had the shishlik or rack of lamb, and I was truly impressed. In fact, I might not have come back if it hadn’t been so good. Cooked to the perfect degree of medium-rareness and served with basmati rice and string beans in tomato sauce, it was absolutely delicious.

We also had the following: mineral water, one coffee and one tea. That was it; no dessert, no liquor. When the bill came to more than $45, I actually added it up to find the mistake. As delicious as our $14.95 dinners had been, it was hard to reconcile the paltry extras and the ultra-casual service with that total, which I would associate with a far more service-oriented place.

I returned several times, lured back by the hope that at least one other dish would re-create the magic of that wonderful shishlik. Consistently, though, the food was commonplace, and the portions were small.

A few dishes did stand out. The tabbouleh salad was refreshing and delicious. The baba ghannouj had that good, smoky, grilled-eggplant flavor, but the second time it also had a slight tang of fermentation (the waiter insisted that it was just a lot of lemon). A sandwich of chicken roasted on a vertical spit, gyro-fashion, was tasty, though dry. In fact, the only thing that came close to the lamb in quality was the grilled quail.

So this is Armen & Salpy’s. It looks like a pretty little hideaway lunch spot that may have seen better days. It has the food and the service of a standard Armenian/Mediterranean cafe, no frills or thrills. Its prices, though, are moderate to high, and therein lies the hitch.

I was consistently uncomfortable when it came time to pay the bill. There is no doubt in my mind that if the prices were lowered and the service and portions were beefed up, Armen & Salpy’s would become a very popular lunch and dinner spot. As if it right now, the occasional pleasures are not worth the prices.

What did happen to Gourmet Gourmet, anyway?

Recommended dishes: tabbouleh , $4.25, and shishlik (rack of lamb), $14.95.

Armen & Salpy’s, 19014 Ventura Blvd., Tarzana, (818) 343-1301. Lunch and dinner 11:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. Mondays to Thursdays, 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, closed Sundays. Beer and wine. Parking lot. Visa and MasterCard.