RESTAURANT REVIEW : When Trendy Bits Don’t Quite Add Up

Pomegranate, a fancy new neighborhood restaurant and bakery on Melrose, is so darn post-modern, you could spend the evening deconstructing everything from the architecture to your appetizers.

The large, kidney-shaped dining room is athematic, componential and confusing to even try to describe. Sitting there, I couldn’t decide if I felt as if I were on the bottom of a swimming pool, at a planetarium or in a modernized Bedrock. Are the flooey columns futuristic or Cubist or cartoony? The tables and chairs seem scattered throughout the room, but it’s hard to say what a better arrangement would be. The chairs are replays from ‘50s dinette sets. The wood-topped tables combine the design elements of butcher blocks, languorous rectangular swimming pools and high-chair trays, which give the subtle yet alarming impression that the room is filled with undersized folks--children with adult visages.

There is also a busy open kitchen filled with stainless steel and dramatic, frequent pan fires; a patio with a rather ugly fountain and chic black-leather lounging beds around the periphery.

It’s a mad and trendy mix all right, and anybody’s opinion about what it all means is up for grabs. I must say, however, it was a bit unnerving to glance over at my dinner date and see what looked like a grown man sitting in a high-chair.

The food, too, is a post-modern amalgamation involving appropriation and retranslation of food from various traditions, including Italian, Southwestern, Californian and various Asian influences. Blue-corn polenta, for example, was served with two pestos and one chile dip. A calamari relleno consisted of three pieces of squid battered with a thick husk of blue corn and stuffed with white beans and sun-dried tomatoes. A scallop ceviche was made with lime, cilantro and Kalamata olives. Although some of the elements of each were delicious, virtually none of the dishes transcended the sum of their curious and disparate parts.

A romaine salad allegedly came with raw artichoke, but while it was fresh and came with nice shavings of Parmesan and a lovely dressing, the large bowl of salad yielded only three tiny artichoke slices that were actually cooked to the point of mushiness.

We had just begun eating the salad when our entrees arrived. Because there was no room on the table for our steak and lamb, the waiter took the hot plates back to the kitchen. The same plates showed up 10 minutes later, perhaps the reason the porterhouse steak was dried out, though it did have a nice charred pepper crust. Ordered medium-rare, it was served medium-well. Still, the seasoning was good and the meat sat on a bed of delicious corn and hominy. A rack of lamb was also encased in a charred pepper crust--most of the red meat seems to be--and managed to remain moist and luscious. Unfortunately, the accompanying roasted eggplant was bitter and the black beans strange-tasting. A thick pork chop, also charred black as coal, was similarly juicy and also paired with a peculiarly sweet mashed squash. Only one entree was truly gruesome: three chunks of albacore that ranged from raw to rubbery, heaped around a pile of bitter greens and squirted with a fluorescent-orange, sweaty chipotle oil.

Our waiter volunteered to choose dessert; he brought a white-chocolate-and-hazelnut cake and while I’m not fond of white chocolate, this was so delicious, I ate all but the white-chocolate husk. We also tried the banana-carrot cake, which I loved because it tasted like banana pudding and carrot cake at the same time.

The service during each of my visits was friendly but off-kilter. The waiters and waitresses had very long lists of daily specials to recite, which kept them glued to tables so long, other customers couldn’t help but feel neglected. On our first visit, it was 15 minutes before we met our waiter, and 10 more before he reappeared to take our order. Every visit was characterized by the crashes of plates and silverware and whole trays being dropped.

At Pomegranate, a love of trendy particulars has eclipsed any concept of a well-functioning whole.

Pomegranate Restaurant and Bakery, 7250 Melrose Ave., Hollywood, (213) 934-4888. Lunch and dinner Tuesday through Sunday. Beer and wine. Valet parking at dinner. Takeout. Major credit cards.