RESTAURANT REVIEW : At Alexis, Desserts to Die for

“To drink, to eat, to dance . . . and never worry about tomorrow.”

Kazantzakis? Nah. John Belushi? Hardly.

These words of wisdom come straight from the menu at Alexis, a Northridge restaurant belonging to a man named Alexis Kavvadias. Kavvadias is a native of Kefalonia, a beautiful, sun-soaked island in the Ionian Sea, so he comes by this world view honestly. Now if he can just make his food as irresistible as his philosophy.

It’s not that anything at this restaurant is bad. The kitchen serves up a generic Greek menu with few surprises, and does so in solid, workmanlike fashion. But much of it is food that you may have tasted before, and which won’t quite make you get up and dance.

There are two dining rooms. The nonsmoking room is the larger--a long rectangle with cheerful wooden paneling and a little dance floor at the far end. Smokers get a square, outdoorsy room with dangling ivy twined in an overhead trellis. Dining here is rather like dining in a sukkah, the makeshift plant-filled tent in which Jewish people celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles.

The one place where the menu does get a little adventurous is in the appetizer section. There is a large selection of both cold and hot appetizers, a couple of which show glimmers of innovation.

I’d start with a selection called combination of dips, where you get to choose three of the five house dips that blend so well with triangles of pita bread. Taramosalata is an obvious choice, a creamy sauce made from the chilled roe of gray mullet. It’s a salty, pink-colored model, with none of the sharpness that a less skillfully blended version can have.

In contrast, the restaurant’s skordalia is sharp to the point of being acrid. Skordalia is a garlic dip made from mashed potato and heaps of crushed garlic, and does not need to be more overwhelming than usual. Blame this condition on a slightly bitter aftertaste, which gives the impression that the skins had been crushed in along with the cloves.

Hot appetizers are more consistent. Soutzoukakia Smirneika is one I’d come back for: spicy meatballs in a red wine sauce. The triangular spinach and cheese pies called spanakopita and tyropita are good too, appropriately buttery in leaves of flaky phyllo pastry.

Most Greek restaurants serve a type of baked or fried cheese called saganaki, an appetizer for pyromaniacs, brought flaming to the table. Alexis goes you several better and does saganaki in a variety of ways: topped with mussels, shrimp, scallops or an orange-flavored sausage called loukanika. Except for a touch too much oil, the ones I tasted were all delicious.

After the good, earthy Greek salad that comes with all entrees (pass on the watery egg-lemon soup), you’ll do better here if you keep things simple. My otherwise tasty dolmades avgolemono (grape leaves stuffed with meat, rice and big, swollen pine nuts) suffered from what the Greeks might call mikrowavitis, its custardy egg-lemon topping frazzled to the top of the leaves. And giouvetsi had its infirmities too. That dish, a peasant-y stew of baked lamb shank with rice-shaped pasta, was just too full of aromatic spices for my taste.

What to eat here? Well, there is a dependable half-chicken, baked in lemon-garlic sauce. Leg of lamb, that old standby, rates as tender and lean, a perfect match for the good rice pilaf that comes along with it. And then there are broiled meats such as loin lamb chops ( paidakia arnisia), which the kitchen does very well indeed. Eat these with the pan-roasted potatoes--ruddy potatoes dripping pan juices and good olive oil.

The restaurant shines when it’s time for dessert. There is an excellent baklava with lots of finely chopped walnut in buttery phyllo pastry, and a first-rate galaktobouriko, the Greek counterpart of the Napoleon with honey-rich Cream of Wheat taking the place of the custard cream. You might also want to try the unusual ouzo cake: a wet, anise-flavored yellow cake with a drift of chopped nuts mixed into the batter.

Try one of these desserts with a muddy Greek coffee or some Mavrodaphne, a Greek dessert wine resembling port. Better yet, have one with a glass of real port, which Alexis’ Lisbon-born wife, Maria, will offer you. It’ll definitely help you forget about tomorrow.

Recommended dishes: taramosalata, $3.95; baked saganaki with lokaniko, $8.95; paidakia arnisia, $15.95; galaktoburiko, $3.50.

Alexis, 9034 Tampa Ave., Northridge, (818) 349-9689. Lunch from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday to Saturday; dinner from 5 to 9 p.m. Monday to Thursday, from 5 to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday, closed Sunday. Beer and wine. Parking lot. American Express, MasterCard and Visa accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $25 to $40.