Restaurants : STRAIGHTFORWARD STUFF : At Red Car Grill, the Best Dishes Are the Simple Ones: Meat, Potatoes and Onion Rings

This year has not been good to the Reluctant Gourmet. “Frilly food,” he fumes. “Stringfellow’s! Asylum! Yujean Kang’s!” He goes spluttering down the list of foods he has been forced to eat: seared ahi tuna with pineapple chutney; grilled breast of chicken with pineapple spears; curried pineapple with ice cream. “Don’t ask me to go to those places anymore,” he says. “Don’t even suggest going out again until you’ve found a restaurant with the kind of food that ordinary people want to eat.”

But 1991 has bestowed one present upon the Reluctant Gourmets of the world: the Red Car Grill. The room practically shouts, “Real food served here!” Cozy almost to the point of hokiness, this jumble of dark wood, long bar, open grills and booths upholstered in Ralph Lauren fabrics is a new take on L.A. Macho. Call it well-heeled he-man.

It’s the sort of place that, despite an interesting wine list, almost demands that you order either beer (another interesting list) or liquor (the drinks are well-made). If you’re the Reluctant Gourmet, you struggle with your conscience and then order onion rings to go with the drink.

“They’re bad for you,” argues the RG, “but they do them so well here.” And they do: If you’re ever going to give in to the guilty pleasure of fried onion rings, this is the place to do it. The kitchen uses very hot, very fresh oil, which makes these skinny strings of fried onion particularly delicious.

If you’re not the Reluctant Gourmet, you might want some oysters or smoked fish. The restaurant smokes its own salmon and sturgeon until the flesh is smooth and silky, and it serves good, fresh West Coast oysters.

Next, the RG always orders the salad with blue cheese--and he is always happy with his huge, cheesy plate of greens. I, on the other hand, in the interest of science, always try one of the other salads--and I am almost always unhappy. The one with spinach and fried mozzarella tends to be greasy. The one with wild rice and chopped vegetables has an unpleasantly scratchy character. The coleslaw is only fair. And even the gazpacho, the salad of the soup world, is sort of bland and disappointing.

“Well, why’d you order such a wimpy dish?” the RG asked bluntly one day as I moped over my soup. “Does this look like the sort of place to eat gazpacho?”

The answer is, of course, no. And that’s the universal clue to ordering here. The Red Car Grill is a restaurant for square meals; if you’re like the Reluctant Gourmet and stick to the simple stuff, you’ll be very happy with the food that you’re served. If you’re like me and insist on ordering risotto with wild mushrooms or lamb skewers over couscous, you probably won’t be very happy.

Consider our first meal here. The RG started with onion rings and the salad with blue cheese. “Great food, great food,” he kept saying, stuffing things into his mouth. I ordered a crab cake, which looked pretty silly sitting on the plate. As crab cakes go, it wasn’t bad, but one crab cake all by itself can’t help but look forlorn. Then the RG had a hamburger, which was served with an array of trendy and delicious mustards, while I had the seven-rice, wild-mushroom risotto. This, the waiter had assured me, is what Jerry Magnin, one of three principal owners, always orders. Why, I can’t imagine; it tasted like something that might be served in a hospital. Then the RG finished off the meal with a hot-fudge sundae with pistachios on top while I ate broiled fruits.

Actually, I liked my dessert very much: It was a fascinating mixture of sliced exotic fruits, lightly broiled and served in syrup. I ate all of my dessert, most of the RG’s--and still left the restaurant hungry. The RG was satisfied and unsympathetic. “It’s your own fault,” he said. “You didn’t order very well.”

I did better on my next visit. I had a steak. The Red Car Grill ages its own meat, and the $17.95 steak is one of the city’s better bargains. Especially when it is served with a big pile of almost-lumpy mashed potatoes that tastes just like something your grandmother might have made. On other visits, I’ve been happy with the liver and onions--which is a down-home dish done just right. And while restaurants all over town seem to be discovering short ribs, the ones served at Red Car Grill are big, meaty and a real bargain at $12.95. Another good bet: the sausage plate.

But you needn’t eat meat at this restaurant: The kitchen does a very good job at grilling fresh fish. Selections change weekly, but there’s always swordfish and salmon, and you can be certain that when you ask that your fish be lightly cooked, it will be. At the moment, fish specials include Alaskan halibut and another seasonal wonder: soft-shell crabs.

Dishes I haven’t liked very much include turkey chili (an idea that should work but, in my opinion, rarely does) and the grilled skewers that the restaurant has taken as a sort of trademark. The skewers--lamb with rosemary served on couscous, turkey breast with basil-orange vinaigrette or scallops on a black-and-white-bean salad--are all more cute than delicious, and when you eat them in this brawny room you can’t help thinking that these dishes are trying too hard.

Desserts, on the other hand, are almost universally successful. In this catalogue of American classics, I’d prefer the rice pudding to be served with cream instead of whipped cream, but that’s a small quibble. The coconut-cream pie is big and rich and wonderful, the apple pie is just plain big, and the cheesecake is everything it should be. If you just want a little bite of something sweet, the cappuccino is served with cookies.

“What I like about this restaurant,” the RG has said more than once as we walked out the door, “is that it’s so comfortable. The service is good--and the food is straightforward stuff.”

It’s what I like about the restaurant, too.

Recommended dishes: onion rings ($4.50), romaine salad with blue cheese ($4.95), steak dinner ($17.95), liver and onions ($12.95), short ribs ($12.95), rice pudding ($3.95), apple pie ($4.50).

Red Car Grill, 8571 Santa Monica Blvd . , West Hollywood; (213) 652-9263. Open for dinner nightly and for lunch Monday through Friday. Full bar. Valet parking. All major credit cards accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $24-$72. Food stylist: Norman Stewart