RESTAURANT REVIEW : Pasta a la TV Tray at Axe

The first time I went to Axe (pronounced ah-shay ) in Santa Monica, I was under a misapprehension. I expected, you know, a restaurant . A friend had been to Axe and loved it; she said it was a little tiny restaurant with just a few tables--”like a home.”

“Like a home,” I thought.

So, on a chilly Friday night, I went to Axe. My date and I entered the little storefront, took a quick look at the few tables by the open door, then climbed some red stairs. We were looking for the home part. Upstairs was a loft area filled with fat sofas and lamps and no tables to speak of. It did sort of look like somebody’s living room. A couple was huddled at one end of the sofa eating off a TV tray. The loft was right above the kitchen and the heat was stifling.

I spoke to the couple on the sofa. “Is it comfortable up here?”

“No,” they said.

So we went back down and sat at a little brown homemade table and waited for a waitress. We didn’t yet get it that you’re supposed to order at the counter.

Rock ‘n’ roll was playing loudly. The front door was open and a cold wind was funneling in. The waitress did come and we asked for a menu. She pointed to a blackboard. We then asked if she could please close the front door because we were freezing. She asked the lanky young chef who we could see right there in the open kitchen. He told her no, it was too hot in the kitchen. For the next few minutes, he and I glowered at each other. I almost left. Then the waitress had an idea: She opened the back door, closed the front and everyone relaxed. Later, I was glad we stayed.

The menu isn’t extensive at Axe. Mostly, there are only sandwiches, soups and sweets to drink with coffee. But on Friday and Saturday nights Axe has a full menu--or rather, its version of a full menu: There are two kinds of pasta.

I had some thick corn chowder and one of the pastas ( checca ); my date had a big, tasty arugula salad and the other pasta ( agli olio ). Both, though very simple, were perfect. The checca was made with good fresh tomatoes and respectable olive oil; the agli olio with fresh parsley and lots of hot red pepper. We also ate huge slabs of warm homemade bread.

Eating the food made me forget my initial gripes with the place. It was hearty and delicious, and Axe, I began to see, wasn’t aspiring to be a real adult restaurant at all (even though a few adults did straggle in). It was more an East Village kind of coffeehouse place, where you could sit and talk or read the paper and/or eat just a few good items. It was certainly the kind of a place I dreamed about finding when I was a bookworm teen-ager, the kind of a place that your parents would hate because it didn’t have the right kind of tables, or because the front door was open and let in a terrible draft.

A few days later, I returned to Axe for a breakfast with two writer friends. In the bright late morning, Axe was more populated and lively and warm. The espresso machine hissed, the kitchen was busy and people kept coming in from the bookstore next door with bags. Many pulled out their purchases and set to reading. At one table, a woman read “Anxiety”; another read “Addictive Thinking.”

We drank good cafe lattes and ate an Italian tart called a Mascia. With its purple grapes, raisins, strawberries and chopped rosemary, it looked like a still-life from a past century; it tasted dark, sweet, and earthy from the rosemary. We also had a Goliath wedge of great, cinnamon-rich bread pudding with old-fashioned clotted cream on the side. Oatmeal came with big plump raisins and roasted sesame seeds (we poured more cream on that). A seven-grain pancake neatly covered one round dinner plate.

We nibbled and talked for a long time, a lot longer than we’d planned. The old man next to us finished his toast and left. He was replaced by a woman who ate in a lotus position. Later, her table was taken by two hip young businessmen who ordered the pretty caprese (tomato, basil and olive oil) sandwiches. If Axe were in our neighborhoods, my friends and I agreed, we’d make good use of it. It’s hard to find a place-- like home --where you can sit around as you please.

Axe, 510 Santa Monica Blvd., Santa Monica; (213) 458-4414. Breakfast, lunch seven days; light supper Mondays-Thursdays; dinner Fridays and Saturdays. BYOB. Cash only. Lunch for two, food only, $10 to $30.