RESTAURANTS : Hey, Whatever You Want : For 26 years, Dan Tana’s has been serving up that old-time quasi-Italian cuisine to its celebrity clientele

Mary couldn’t quite decide what to have. “Do you like veal?” asked Antonio, our attentive, almost avuncular captain. Yes, she answered. “OK,” he continued, “do you like mushrooms?” Yes. “Peppers?” Yes. “Garlic?” Sure. “Tomato sauce?” Yes.

Antonio nodded. “OK. What I think you should have, which is not on the menu but we can make it for you, is scaloppine pizzaiola. OK?” OK.

And indeed the scaloppine pizzaiola was OK, and more than OK: good, tender veal in a dark, intense (if underseasoned) tomato sauce full of green peppers and mushrooms. But what was most OK of all was the confidence and apparently genuine interest with which Antonio had led Mary through the gastronomic possibilities.

He had wanted very much to please her, and had obviously known exactly what the kitchen could and could not accomplish toward that end. If Mary had demurred at, say, the peppers, I have no doubt that he would have gone off without a moment’s hesitation in some other direction, directing her to a pepperless scaloppine this or scaloppine that. That’s the kind of thing I like about Dan Tana’s.

Celebrating its 26th anniversary this year, Dan Tana’s is an unabashedly old-fashioned red-and-white-checkered-tablecloth American-Italian restaurant, with unabashedly old-fashioned captains and waiters--the kind to whom SAG is a physical condition related to working hard and not the name of their union--and a menu of pre-Rex, pre-Valentino food that bears only marginal resemblance to anything you might actually eat in Italy. (The chef, like owner Dan Tana and much of the staff, is from Yugoslavia--but the food isn’t much like anything you’d get in that country, either.)

What sets it apart from other red-and-white-checkered-tablecloth establishments around town, though, besides the old-school professionalism of the service, is the simple fact that, however reactionary it might be in style (and you may rest assured there is no venison carpaccio or squid-ink risotto to be found here), the food is consistently well-made and immensely satisfying in quantity and quality.

Tana’s and I go back a long way. It was the subject of the first professional restaurant review I ever wrote, in September of 1970--not a review for publication, but a scouting report for the old Holiday magazine dining awards, then administered by the estimable Silas Spitzer. (My dinner for two, with wine and tip, cost $31.95.)

Later, when I worked in the record business, Tana’s became my regular hangout on Tuesday nights--the Troubadour is just down the street--and I used to drink too much slivovitz at the bar with my buddy Charlie, who used to buy drinks for the entire room on his record-company credit card. Then we’d sit down at one of the rather cramped red Leatherette booths, beneath the clusters of Chianti bottles tied to the rafters, next door to people like Joni Mitchell or Tom Waits or, oh, maybe Mick Jagger, and eat fried zucchini and Caesar salad and calf’s liver and such until the cows came home. The food was never great, but it was always good, and it fueled some of my happiest restaurant memories.

Returning to Tana’s recently for the first time in at least a dozen years, I was extremely pleased to find the menu almost unchanged (but for the inevitable rise in prices) and the food as good, and as non-great, as ever. The Caesar salad, for instance, is oily and anchovy-strong, but delicious in an aggressive sort of way. The Dan Tana salad, of head lettuce, garbanzos, mozzarella, tomato and cucumber, nearly drowns in its garlicky, herb-flecked dressing--but again, tastes great if you don’t mind its moxie.

Stracciatella (misspelled straciatelle on the menu) is a boring soup at best, but here at least tastes of real, strong chicken stock. Clams arreganato are fresh and sweet, and their herb-and-bread-crumb topping is nicely seasoned and not at all gluey as such things can be. And though I think mozzarella marinara is sort of a silly dish to begin with (if the mozzarella has any flavor, why obscure it in thick, garlicky tomato sauce?), the Tana’s version attains a nice balance of textures: ample, molten cheese; crisp, fresh-fried breading; rich, chunky marinara.

Such pastas as mostaccioli tossed with oil and garlic (not listed on the menu, but always available) and fettuccine Alfredo are paradigms of what such dishes should be. Both are served al dente, the former light and brazenly full of minced garlic (browned but not scorched), and the latter luxuriantly creamy, and if not authentically Roman, then at least authentically New Yorkese.

The veal saltimbocca here wouldn’t win any medals for authenticity, either, but was quite good one evening: thin slices of veal topped with prosciutto and mozzarella (both apparently domestic in origin) and posed on a bed of fresh asparagus spears. A broiled lobster tail, though pricey at $33, was a real surprise, properly cooked and really tasting of lobster. The even pricier New York steak, which some Tana’s regulars swear is the best in town, is indeed big, flavorful, perfectly crusted outside and perfectly cooked within.

Side orders of pasta, a choice of four or five different varieties, are served with the steak and most other main dishes. These are fine, but the restaurant’s excellent a la carte crisp-fried onions and/or country-fried potatoes seem more appropriate accompaniments to the steak, and to other simple meat dishes.

The same onions and potatoes also figure in the pollo Beckerman, named for producer and regular customer Sidney Beckerman (“Cabaret,” “Marathon Man,” “The Sicilian”). This is one of the best things on the menu: a big, attractively earthy hashlike dish, more Eastern European than Italian in character, in which onions and potatoes are sauteed with hunks of moist, boneless chicken and strips of green pepper. This is real food, difficult to resist . . . though I did notice Beckerman himself at the restaurant one evening dining on grilled swordfish instead.

Not everything at Tana’s works, it must be said. There are some dishes whose monotony and lack of subtlety will remind customers of why they grew disenchanted with this sort of quasi-Italian cooking in the first place. Fried calamari are tender enough, but the batter is bland and sawdusty. Ricotta-stuffed manicotti with marinara sauce is just a big, dumb plateful of calories. Sauteed steak with peppers is made with generous quantities of excellent beef, but the sauce is strangely flavorless, and even slightly bitter. The zabaglione tastes unaccountably like applesauce.

On the other hand, that was Bruce Springsteen sitting in the corner one evening, just like old times. Mary liked that even better than her scaloppine pizzaiola.

Dan Tana’s

9071 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood, (213) 275-9444.

Dinner 5 p.m.-1 a.m. Monday-Saturday; 5 p.m.-midnight. Sunday. Full bar. Valet parking. American Express, MasterCard, Visa. Dinner for two, food only, $32 to $102.

Suggested dishes: stracciatella, $4; Caesar salad, $6.50; clams arreganato, $8.50; crisp fried onions, $4; country fried potatoes, $4; fettuccine Alfredo, $15; pollo Beckerman, $18; New York cut steak, $36.