RESTAURANT REVIEW : Want Real Grub? Sit a Spell at Skoby’s

Chatsworth is about as much like Wyoming as any place gets, this side of the Santa Monica Mountains. Horses strut about in white-fenced corrals. The foothills look close enough to touch.

Walk into a local hangout in this town, Skoby’s Country Inn, and what do you see? Families, natch, here for the family-style food, and also a few leather-skinned roughnecks who look as if they’ve been out taming stallions all day. In general, these guys favor the bar, where they can drink giant mugs of beer and swap stories about their exploits. But when they get hungry, Katie, bar the door--they get hungry.

Skoby’s is the right place for them. It’s a rugged-looking roadhouse with a bar full of black Naugahyde booths at one end and a sweet, rustic dining room at the other. The dining room has turn-of-the-century ceiling fans, glass-topped tables and beams sticking through a slanted roof. Call it mom-and-pop deconstructionism, and don’t bother any of the boys in the bar with one of these expressions. They’re just here for the grub.

No problem. Food comes in trencherman portions that look almost intimidating if you aren’t an endurance rider. Take the stuffed mushroom appetizer: jumbo mushrooms the size of a Little Leaguer’s baseball cap. The kitchen heaps them with fresh ricotta cheese or good, crumbly homemade sausage. They come four to an order, and must weigh six ounces apiece.

Then there’s the chicken liver pate, a monstrous scoop surrounded by lettuce, tomato and black olives. I don’t endorse this one; it’s food-processor-mushy and distinctive only for its sheer bulk. The onion rings, garlic toast and fried zucchini sticks served here are kindred spirits to the pate, oversized and underwhelming.

The house specialty at Skoby’s is country-style pan-fried chicken, golden brown and four pieces to the order. Pan-fried chicken has a different character altogether from deep-fried; it’s denser, crisper, and when done skillfully, far less oily. Skoby’s chicken is dense, crisp, and so forth, but the superlatives end there; it just doesn’t taste like a whole lot. The chicken itself is a little tired, and whatever it is dredged with could use more zip.

But it’s still an impressive dinner, all told, and at a very low price ($9.95) to boot. The accompaniments are all terrific. First you get a creamy cabbage soup and a basket of moist, flaky squares of corn bread, and then with the chicken come great mashed potatoes, peppery black-eyed peas and a viscous country gravy that could encase a mobster’s feet on his way to the bottom of the river. If they would liven up the chicken just a bit, the dinner would be a knockout.

A couple of things here are already knockouts. The unctuous homemade meat loaf, wrapped in brown paper before baking, is the rival of any meat loaf on the Westside. And the stuffed pork chop with corn bread stuffing is the best I’ve tasted in this area, an honest dish with an honest farmhouse appeal.

There’s much more to the menu than these dishes: several broiled fish--sea bass, shark and sole to name a few--and a whole list of specialties such as chicken fried steak and a full slab of ribs. The ribs are so big that they stick out over both sides of the platter they are served on (too bad they’re so overdone; the meat is so soft it literally falls apart when you bite into it).

At lunchtime you’ll find good burgers, a meaty top sirloin sandwich and a fine club sandwich with crisp bacon on soft egg bread. Ask for some of the house barbecue beans with your sandwich. They are sensational, with hunks of bacon in every smoky bite.

You can’t get the pan-fried chicken at lunch, but there is a dish called chicken and pasta. I liked it better than the pan-fried chicken, actually. It’s half a baked chicken with that good corn bread stuffing, served on a bed of buttered noodles and smothered with that same petroleum-jelly-thick country gravy.

Have them put the gravy on the side, unless you’re planning a long ride after lunch. Like to Wyoming.

Recommended dishes: stuffed jumbo mushrooms with ricotta, $3.95; with sausage $4.95; home-made meat loaf, $9.95; stuffed pork chop (Wednesday only, after 5 p.m.), $7.50; homemade cheese cake, $3.25.

Skoby’s Country Inn, 20419 Devonshire St., Chatsworth; (818) 718-0433. Lunch from 11:30 a.m to 2:30 p.m. Monday to Friday; dinner from 5 to 9:30 p.m. daily. Full bar. Parking lot. All major credit cards. Dinner for two, food only, $25 to $40.