RESTAURANT REVIEW : Food Doesn’t Lose in the Translation

A bowl of good matzo ball soup is hard to find. A decent won-ton min is even harder. Imagine my shock at finding both in the same restaurant.

Hadar is the name of the place where this happened, a glatt kosher Chinese restaurant with a Jewish Moroccan owner named Yvonne Ohana.

Ohana is an accomplished cook, specializing in traditional European Jewish dishes like carrot tzimmes and Moroccan snacks like hummus, metbukha and merguez. She took the place over a few months back, and apparently a Chinese cook named Pong and a waitress named Chun came with it. So did an elderly Romanian named Mendel, who wears a yarmulke and takes the money.

Spending an evening at Hadar is like walking into the lobby of the United Nations. You will hear French, of course--Ohana’s native tongue--punctuated by Hebrew, Yiddish, Hungarian, Chinese and . . . I know I’m leaving one out. Oh, yes--English.

An elderly man walked up to my table and said, “Vos iss dos?”--Yiddish for “What’s that?”--as he pointed to something on my plate, and when I replied “barbecued beef ribs,” he pronounced that it looked pretty good. When the waitress found out I could speak to her in Chinese, Mendel overheard and began talking to me in Hungarian.

It’s just a brightly lit, cramped little storefront, so privacy is not part of the equation. Hadar is the kind of place where total strangers converse across the room, and a lot of shouting goes on. To say that the restaurant is lively would be an understatement.

The food can be terrific, though, especially if Yvonne has anything to do with it. A cross-cultural favorite here is the chicken schnitzel sandwich--golden brown hunks of sauteed chicken stuffed into pita bread with salad and tahini, the runny paste made from ground sesame.

There are lots of Moroccan appetizers. Moroccan cigars are little pastries with a spicy meat filling; metbukha is a pureed tomato dish made with green pepper; boracasses are perhaps cousins of the borek--something like potato knishes, Middle Eastern style. Yvonne makes an unctuous eggplant dip, too.

After that, you may want to make a foray into the Chinese menu--the dishes, incidentally, that most of the customers will be eating. That delicious won-ton soup, for instance, is a generous helping of plump beef dumplings surrounded by winter vegetables (snow peas, bamboo and water chestnuts). Vegetarian dishes are good, too, such as the hot and spicy eggplant or chow mein with black mushrooms and baby corn.

Pong gets a lot of mileage out of chicken and beef (the only two meats he cooks with). His dishes are all fresh and tasty, if somewhat one-dimensional. Chicken Hunan style is fresh broccoli and straw mushrooms in a spicy brown sauce. Cashew beef has a bed of crispy fried noodles underneath. The customers go wild for them.

Maybe they can’t get them at home. Personally, I prefer the Jewish dishes here, but that would seem to put me in the minority. All the food is supervised by a Rabbi Bukspan, and the rabbi must eat well. There is a host of homemade soups daily, including bean, barley and chicken vegetable. Hadar’s matzo ball soup is one of the best around, a fluffy matzo ball accompanied by wispy egg noodles and bits of carrot and onion in a flavorful chicken broth.

A helper in the back prepares the heavier dishes of Central Europe--beef goulash, stuffed cabbage and chicken paprikash (the kosher-style recipe made without sour cream). The knockout beef ribs, fall-off-the-bone tender in a complex sweet and sour sauce, have a real homey taste. And for fish lovers, there is always broiled salmon or some breaded trout on hand. Don’t bother asking to have the fish undercooked.

I’d come back just for dessert. Ohana is an accomplished patissiere, as the prominently displayed refrigerator case of pastries attests. It’s full of little strawberry and apple tarts, looking very French; multilayered chocolate squares, looking very Hungarian, and Moroccan specialties, which she usually prepares only on special order.

I was lucky enough to catch one of the last fazuelos, a crispy North African pastry made from flour and egg, rolled up like a piece of parchment and drenched in a sugar syrup. Her chocolate square, by the way, is one of the best I have tasted. It consists of layers of sponge cake and chocolate mousse with a thick, grainy chocolate topping. I’ve started learning Hungarian.

Suggested dishes: Moroccan cigars, 12 for $5; schnitzel sandwich, $5.50; won-ton soup, $4.50; chicken Hunan style, $10.75; barbecued beef ribs, $7.95.

Hadar, 12514 Burbank Blvd . , North Hollywood, (818) 762-1155. Lunch 11:30 a.m.-3 p.m. and dinner 3 to 9 p.m. Sunday-Friday. Closed Saturday. Parking lot in rear. No alcoholic beverages. Cash only. Dinner for two, food only, $15-$25.