RESTAURANT REVIEW : Glendale Grill Offers a Boardroom Look but a Great Burger

Opening a restaurant and stuck for a name? Why not call it the Anywhere Grill? An actual grill is not required.

I’m not implying that the Glendale Grill, an upbeat-concept restaurant in the old Rusty Scupper area, doesn’t serve grilled dishes. They do have a few, but not really so you’d notice.

The place is owned and managed by Stouffer, which might account for a certain generic quality. The dining room has a glossy boardroom ambience, like an upscale cafeteria dressed up for dinner: all sharp angles and blond wood on the outside in the Finnish sauna mode, stark white and spacious inside. Only a soaring ceiling saves it from looking like the executive dining room of a large corporation.

Finding the restaurant might be a bit daunting. It’s a free-standing building amid a jumble of high-rises several blocks north of downtown Glendale. Enter through the garage, rather than between the buildings, or you could miss the sign (I did) and find yourself walking in circles around an office complex.

The transparent plastic menu, with its computer paper inserts, has a glossy look itself. It’s filled with appetizing selections, and at the busy lunch hour it moves a lot of trendy sandwiches, exotic salads and good, intelligently conceived pizzas. In the evening, when things are far more subdued, the grilled items and fresh seafoods are more popular. Should you wish, say, pizza for dinner or seafood for lunch, there shouldn’t be any problem, because much the same menu is served throughout the day.

You might want to start with a buzzword sandwich such as the muffaletta, made with prosciutto, salami, provolone cheese and an olive pate. This isn’t the sandwich you’ll get at Central Grocery in New Orleans--the pate is far too creamy and lacks bite. But it is served on a round of fresh, oily focaccia bread, and it does make a savory lunch.

The Glendale burger comes on the same bread and is even better. The meat is fresh and tasty, and I liked the combination of grilled peppers and provolone with the garlic and Dijon mustard glaze underneath. It’s one of the more interesting burgers I’ve tasted in a long time.

Salads come in large glass bowls and tend to be more show than substance; they’re attractive but short on flavor. Caesar salad, for instance, is a creamy, passable Caesar crowned by a slightly overcooked piece of grilled chicken breast.

The so-called Thai beef and grilled vegetable salad is one to consider: a large chunk of garlic-marinated beef, sliced London broil style atop greens with grilled onions and peppers. It’s a good concept, but without ginger, lemon grass, mint or indeed any of the herbs or spices Thais use in their cooking, its name is pretty misleading.

Heartier appetites will want to start with a crusty pizza or one of the appetizers. The four-cheese pizza is properly gooey and pungent. The best appetizer, hands down, is Glendale Grill chili, a thick, meaty dish of ground chuck and Italian sausage. It isn’t at all spicy, but the sausage gives it a distinctive flavor.

An appetizer called shrimp with four-pepper sauce isn’t bad, either, but the menu description totally misleads us. It claims the sauce contains green peppercorns, cayenne and two kinds of black pepper (Malabar and Tellicherry). Whatever it contained was fine with me, but the stuff looked and tasted like green apple sauce.

The grilled dishes are almost twice the price of the sandwiches and salads--and about half as interesting. The grilled shrimp, for instance, have a neutral flavor, bedded on an oily rice pilaf with abundant chopped nuts. There’s a pork chop that tastes as if it could have come from any coffee shop. The grilled chicken breast tends to be overcooked and the sauces--herb, barbecue and Parmesan--taste no different from the ones in frozen entrees. Only the big, juicy cut of prime rib scores high.

There are three house-made desserts, two of which merit attention. One is Toll House pie, a Mrs. Fields-like cookie batter in a pie crust featuring Nestle’s chocolate bits, topped with vanilla ice cream and a rich chocolate sauce. The other is the house specialty, a steamed chocolate pudding served piping hot. This is really like an English tea cake that has been steamed in a jar: soft and fudgey, with a scoop of molten hard sauce running down its sides like lava.

As for the fresh fruit trifle, a gloopy melange in a cocktail glass, forget it altogether. Or better yet, send it on up to the executive dining room.

Recommended dishes; Glendale Grill chili, $3.50, four-cheese pizza, $5.50., prime rib, $13.95, Toll House pie, $2.95.

Glendale Grill, 200 Burchette St., Glendale; (818) 241-1187. Lunch from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Monday through Friday. Dinner from 5:30 to 10 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 5:30 to 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday; 5 to 9 p.m. Sunday. Sunday brunch 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Validated parking in lot. Full bar. All major credit cards. Dinner for two, food only, $20 to $40.