RESTAURANT REVIEW : Mom-and-Pop Place for Mom and Pop

Every small town has one: a small cafe where regulars gather, the food tastes home-cooked, and the waitresses are the denizens’ pretty young daughters at their first jobs. On a charming stretch of Sunset Boulevard, the main street of the small town of Pacific Palisades, sits Austin’s with its stylishly simple facade.

A wooden bench outside can accommodate either those waiting to get in, or those old timers who just want a good spot to sit and whittle and watch the world go by. One Sunday, as we came for brunch, there was indeed an elderly couple seated on the bench, casting a stern eye on the passing beach traffic. We out-of-towners found ourselves examined with unblinking gazes.

Inside the bright small restaurant is a sea of tables and sturdy, bright chile-pepper-red chairs. The rest of the decor is suburban Southwestern: the walls hung with pastel pink and blue Indian blankets and pretty, flowery watercolors.

Austin’s is homey, reasonably priced and has a varied but not outlandish menu. Looking around, I thought Austin’s seemed like a good place to bring one’s parents--they’d be impressed with their child’s decent taste and thriftiness. Moments later, a young man entered with his mom and pop. Although Mom immediately re-set the table, she shortly settled down and began spearing the mild, house-pickled carrots and peppers provided as complimentary appetizers.

The food at Austin’s is familiar and no doubt pleasing to moms, especially moms of the Sunset Magazine school. There are a lot of baked and roasted items--pot pie, meat loaf, brisket, lasagna, all with a slight creative twist. The meat loaf is a recipe from Tubac, Ariz.; the lasagna is made with duck meat. There are also chicken soup and a selection of Mexican, or rather Southern Arizona-style, entrees.

A friend and I split a grilled shrimp salad, which came to the table in a family-sized big white bowl. It tasted just like the kind of salad you’d make at home if you’d gone to the supermarket in an experimental mood; there was red and green leaf lettuce, slices of fresh papaya and melon, and some luscious grilled shrimp in a refreshing vinaigrette. Nothing fancy, just a bit of home-cooking adventure. We served ourselves firsts and then seconds and then fished out the remaining bits of fruit and shrimp from among the greens.

The so-called American entrees were what used to be called a square meal. Meat, potatoes, vegetables and bread. The roast loin of pork was a thick hunk of juicy, well-cooked meat with a thick green vein of powerful sage, cilantro and garlic stuffing. There were sides of house-made applesauce, red rose potatoes browned to the point of impenetrability, and some nicely steamed asparagus and carrots.

The duck lasagna was a large, hot serving of bubbling ricotta, noodles and several morsels of duck, with some nice chopped fresh tomatoes on top. It was filling and bland.

A fruit cobbler was blend of berries and pears with a disappointingly soggy and oily topping. The fresh banana bread served with applesauce would be better served with tea in the afternoon and not after a major square meal. The best dessert was a creamy, fluffy chocolate pudding that looked and tasted exactly like chocolate ice cream, only 10 or 20 degrees warmer.

A few days later, we moseyed into Austin’s for Sunday brunch. It was a sleepy, sunny afternoon, and business was very slow. Our waitress was another very pretty, very young lady who was doing her best, but who, it seemed, would have been much happier down on the beach with her friends.

We tried an average Caesar salad, which again came in a family-sized bowl from which we served ourselves. The salmon cakes were near-perfect replicas of my own mother’s salmon cakes, with celery and red pepper, except that Mom never made them so perfectly round. Baby-back ribs, a short xylophone of perfect three-inch bones, were a bit over-sauced, but we ate every one. A too-acidic vinegar-soaked cucumber salad and some rather soggy potatoes accompanied these entrees.

We also tried some red snapper and skirt steak tacos which came with black beans and rice. The tacos needed spice; the tortillas were rubbery. The beans and rice were utterly bland.

Like the wall decor, the food was Southwesternism diluted for the most mild, suburban of tastes. I’ve had far livelier, juicier taco dinners at half the price from taco trucks, but never, it’s true, in Pacific Palisades.

Austin’s, 15246 Sunset Blvd., Pacific Palisades, (213) 454-2288. Lunch and dinner seven days. MasterCard, Visa. No alcoholic beverages. Street parking. Dinner for two, food only, $26-$46.