RESTAURANTS : Rustic Seasoning : Pastis evokes a country-like charm only 15 minutes north of Santa Monica

Pastis looks almost like a Hollywood-musical version of a country place, its white-tablecloths and blue-checked chairs set in a charming stuccoed dining room; in an enclosed, heated patio overgrown with grapevines, and outdoors--when it’s warm out--around an old fire pit. When you pull into the parking lot, there’s that reassuring country crunch of gravel, the tang of wood smoke, the sharp smell of pines. When you walk through the front door, your footsteps echo as they would in somebody’s old house.

Our urban idea of the country restaurant comes from the Italian, or in some cases the Provencale: an attractive rural place rustic enough so that you can feel superior to it, yet sophisticated enough to admire, a restaurant connected somehow to the land. The country restaurant, as opposed to the roadhouse, serves bruschetta , not garlic toast; Merlot, not Miller Lite. Napa Valley is lousy with the joints.

When people in London talk about a country restaurant, they mean someplace way out in the fens--the remoteness is part of the adventure. When New Yorkers use the term, they’re probably referring to somewhere two states away. But when West L.A. guys say they want to go to a real country restaurant, Pastis is the kind of place they have in mind. It feels almost like being in a charming restaurant in the sticks, except it’s only 15 minutes north of Santa Monica, and you can get half-bottles of Edna Valley Chardonnay. The food’s a little better than you expect, too.

Pastis is positioned in the heart of Topanga Canyon, about equidistant from Pacific Palisades and Woodland Hills, and the local gout de terroir has more to do with cactus wholesalers and grizzled old gentlemen who make dolls from discarded bits of telephone wire than it does with local vegetables or local wine or fish from local streams. If Topanga had a regional cuisine, it would probably be based around apple juice and the mung bean. Topanga does have a local clientele, and many of them prefer Pastis, which is run by owner Marsha Sands and chef Steve Gomberg, both of Santa Monica’s popular “country-French” restaurant Camelions, to the local tofu cafes.

You pretty much know what you want to eat at a place like this, and that’s pretty much what you get. (Except for the bread, which is kind of pasty and awful . . . it used to be Pastis Restaurant and Bakery , but somebody covered up the Bakery part of its sign with peeling strips of masking tape, and evidently buys the restaurant’s dinner rolls at someplace like Vons now.)

There’s bruschetta to start, slices of grilled bread with olive oil and garlic buried under juicy mounds of diced raw tomatoes and fennel, and rustica , which is the same thing pumped up with anchovy paste. (Try the bruschetta with a bottle of Domaine Tempier Bandol Rose, possibly the most delicious pink wine in the world.) You’ll find huge bowls of good, old-fashioned salad greens dressed in a strong mustardy vinaigrette, and small bowls of soup au pistou , which is like a decent minestrone with some basil in it and rather too many lentils.

As a “family dinner,” you can get the soup, a smaller, less mustardy version of the salad, and steak, chicken or a nice piece of sauteed cod in lemon butter for $12-$15 complete.

The “French cold plate” is pretty good--dabs of white-bean salad, roasted tomatoes, grilled strips of red bell pepper and eggplant, things that seem more Tuscan than French, arrayed around a little crock of goat cheese and some wedges of thin toast. Nothing here would knock you over at Campanile or Locanda, but it all seems tasty, in the way fried chicken is always great when you eat it under a tree.

Rustic food in California usually means modified Italian food, and Pastis has pastas like a picnic’s got ants--rigatoni with Roquefort, linguine with clams, angel-hair in a bizarre sauce of tomatoes, roasted almonds and mint. Gnocchi are fancy dinner-party food, light and tender, airy as can be, drowning in a Bon Appetit-fan’s dream sauce of cream, shredded leeks, cream and cream. Risotto with red peppers, creamy-textured but mushy, is of clear bell pepper flavor.

Entrees are simple things, carefully prepared if not thrilling. There’s a roast chicken, of course, crisp-skinned, fragrant with garlic and herbs, served with a fried slice of wonderfully herby polenta; and a steak, a tiny top sirloin, with a red wine sauce and a dark pile of stewed mushrooms; and slices of grilled leg of lamb. Baby Coho salmon are stuffed with anchovies and olives and roasted whole, a layer of potatoes underneath to catch all the salty, pungent juice.

Desserts are the usual creme brulees and cheesecakes and flourless chocolate cakes, surrounded with pools of the usual raspberry sauce. But they could be the best sweets in this stretch of Topanga. Best by a country mile.

Pastis

156 S. Topanga Canyon Blvd., Topanga, (213) 455-1482.

Open for dinner Wed.-Sun. from 6 to 10 p.m., to 10:30 p.m. Fri.-Sat.; for Sunday brunch 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Beer and wine. Lot parking. Patio dining. MasterCard, Visa accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $26-$45.

Recommended dishes: French cold plate, $7; gnocchi with leeks, $9; roast half-chicken with polenta, $11; leg of lamb with rosemary and thyme, $16.