RESTAURANT REVIEW : Pantheon Restaurant Deserves a Crowd to Appreciate its Authentic Greek Dishes, Drama

Imagine a Greek restaurant drama.

Act I: The waiter lights a fire under a piece of cheese and the stage resounds with cries of opa.

Act II: Lamb and chicken are brought out on giant platters, while hearty peasants leap around a dance floor and a frenzied musician plucks wildly at his bouzouki .

Act III, the grand finale: Our hero learns his fate from a beautiful mystic who reads . . . his coffee grounds. Hope you can stay for baklava after the show.

Pantheon, a new Greek restaurant in Tarzana, has the flaming cheese, the bouzouki player, the mystic, the coffee and the baklava. It also has some of the most authentic Greek cooking in greater Los Angeles.

What it doesn’t have yet is the audience. The staff and musicians here rarely play to a full house, though they deserve one. This is a restaurant that needs to be discovered so it can be as lively as it should be.

It’s a great-looking place. The dining room walls are sun-splashed white, draped with giant, colorful oil paintings depicting Greek legends. The banquettes are as blue as the Aegean. In the middle of it all there is a parquet floor, because what is a Greek restaurant without dancing?

The appetizers, Act I in our Greek drama, are seductively heavy ones that attempt to steal the show from the main dishes. Taramosalata , a salty dip made from cod roe, is whipped ultra-smooth and goes well with the garlicky eggplant dip, melitzanosalata, and the cucumber-and-yogurt salad, tzatziki. They can be ordered together as a combination, and make perfect foils for the hot, puffy house bread.

The hot appetizers are terrific. Smarides are fresh-tasting fish (smelts) fried in olive oil. Pantheon makes great spanakopites-- not slices from a pan but little triangular filo pies filled with spinach and cheese. Keftedakia , which are usually referred to as meatballs but here deserve to be called sauteed meat cakes, are crisp outside and soft in the middle, frizzled a deep brown and redolent of garlic and cloves.

The brightest of all is oktopodi , marinated octopus that is cooked on a grill. It’s not chewy or mushy at all, with a magnificent flavor a little like rock lobster.

Pantheon’s stuffed grape leaves and its Greek sausage ( loukanika ) are acquired tastes; the sausage is excessively pungent with orange peel and the grape leaves have an odd bitterness. As for the flaming cheese known as saganaki , it’s mostly for dramatic effect. Made from a sheep’s milk cheese called kefalotiri , it ends up wet and runny--like mozzarella on a frozen pizza.

Good as the appetizers are, this is one show in which the climax happens to come in Act II with the main courses. They are heavy, savory dishes such as those you’d find in a Greek village taverna. Pastitsio , a macaroni casserole layered with aromatically spiced ground beef, upstages almost everything else. It floats in a deep ceramic dish with a bubbly brown bechamel topping.

A half chicken drenched with lemon juice, olive oil and oregano is roasted with big slices of potato that soak up the oil and turn burnt orange, intense with the flavors of lemon and chicken. Tender leg of lamb with green mint sauce is cooked the same way, served with potatoes that have picked up the taste of the roasted lamb.

Only the moussaka , a real show stopper in many Greek restaurants, gives a subpar performance. The kitchen uses too much oil, and the eggplant becomes an oil-soaked sponge.

The entrees are a tough act to follow, but you shouldn’t leave before Act III. Pantheon makes its own yogurt, a thicker one than what is commercially available, and serves it for dessert with whole roasted walnuts and honey. You could also get a cinnamony rice pudding called rizogalo or a sticky walnut baklava.

You’ve ordered Greek coffee to finish off the meal, and someone is on hand to read the coffee grounds on the saucer when your empty cup is turned over. Look in the saucer and you see . . . a crowded restaurant full of life. That’s the future I see, anyway.

Recommended dishes; combination of three dips, $7.95; spanakopites, $4.95; keftedakia, $5.25; pastitsio, $10.95; leg of lamb, $13.95.

Pantheon

18928 Ventura Blvd., Tarzana; (818) 705-0633.

Open 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Wednesday to Saturday and Monday; from 4 to 11 p.m. Sunday. Full bar. Parking lot.

Dinner for two, food only, $25 to $40. MasterCard, American Express, Diners and Visa.