Sturdy, Conservative Fare at Drones

Once, the Hollywood Athletic Club was just what its name implied--a place to exercise. In recent years, it hosted theater groups and the occasional nightclub--a place to socialize. (Often, the demimonde gathered inside the club’s empty swimming pool, notable for its side markings that read “SHALLOW” and “DEEP.” The hippest chose to stand in the shallow end.)

Now the Hollywood Athletic Club has become a billiards club. And it’s nothing like you’d imagine a Hollywood pool bar to be. Row after row of professional billiards tables, each lit by an expensive-looking pro-player lamp, fills two huge rooms. You almost get the feeling that a crew from ABC’s “Wide World of Sports” is about to show up. And there’s not one neon beer sign.

Past the tables is a genteel-looking room, the club’s restaurant, Drones. Like a good old-fashioned club (Bertie Wooster’s, perhaps?), the menu is fairly conservative. There are steaks, chops, a shrimp cocktail, a Caesar salad, also a few pastas, fried calamari and a good blue-crab-and-avocado salad dressed with remoulade. The poached oysters with champagne and leeks was good, too.

But Drones is still very new--it may take some time for the kitchen and the servers to get their timing down. And be warned: The stuffed, roasted free-range chicken is not “stuffed” in the traditional sense. Underneath the golden-brown bird is exactly one celery stick and one carrot stick--a triumph of culinary minimalism.

Drones at the Hollywood Athletic Club, 6525 Sunset Blvd., Hollywood, (213) 962-6600. Dinner for two, food only, $28-$60.