Summertime: A Guide to Entertainment, Activities And Excursions : The Global Valley : Many restaurants in the ethnically diverse Valley double as nightclubs with live entertainment when the hour grows late.

Dinner and a movie are the quintessential way for a California couple to spend a Saturday night, but here, in the great ethnic stewpot we call the San Fernando Valley, there are hot times to be found in more unlikely places.

Consider, for example, an evening in one of the musically inclined ethnic restaurants, the ones that double as nightclubs when the hour grows late. Here’s a short list of diverse locations offering live entertainment, fine dining and cultural encounters found only in a city like Los Angeles. You may end up spending more time than you bargained for, but it’s guaranteed that you won’t spend a whole lot of money.

RUSSIAN HOUSE

Most Russians living in this area wouldn’t dream of going to a restaurant that didn’t have some kind of entertainment. And when Russians party, Natasha, bar the door.

Russian House is a quiet, dimly lit room with excellent food and lively music, all in Russian of course. Friday and Saturday evenings, there is a gypsy show with lots of costumed storytelling, wildly gesticulating singers performing pop ballads and plenty of sweaty dancing. Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday, a Russian trio performs mournful folk tunes, to a more sedate group of listeners. On any night, though, vodka flows like the Don.

The food, like the atmosphere, is heavy, but most of it tastes terrific. Klava Borodina, the chef, has put together a sort of pan-Slavic menu, with dishes from places such as the Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, the Baltics and even Central Asia. There are wonderful pelmenyi, those garlicked-up Siberian ravioli; toothsome baklazhaniya icra, a pungent eggplant dip, and the richest beef Stroganoff in town, all served by emigre waiters who sound exactly like Robin Williams in Paul Mazursky’s cult masterpiece, “Moscow on the Hudson.”

Russian House, 22864 Ventura Blvd., Woodland Hills, (818) 348-5112. Open for dinner only, from 6-10 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday. Closed Monday. Full bar. Parking lot. Visa and MasterCard accepted. Entertainment from 9 p.m. Friday and Saturday evenings, sometimes Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday, but call first. No cover charge.

NORAH’S PLACE

Did you know there was a Bolivian community in the San Fernando Valley? Come to Norah’s Place any weekend night if you need proof.

This fascinating restaurant is worth a special trip for the food alone, but the entertainment, mostly tango music and other dance forms indigenous to owner Norah Lopez’s native Bolivia, is surprisingly arresting.

It’s another of those dark, smoke-filled rooms where people sit in long rows facing the stage. The napkins stick straight up out of their glasses, like little flagpoles.

Bolivian food is unusual mostly because of its staple, a millet-like grain called quinoa with a nutty, crunchy character. Bolivians eat it in soups, pilafs and desserts. Chef Juan Lopez, Norah’s husband, prepares a mean sopa de mani, a piquant peanut-based soup; wonderful lapping steak, beef with treads like a Goodyear tire served sizzling on an iron platter, and excellent Argentine fare such as empanadas and parrillada, the famous mixed grill.

Wash it all down with good red wines from Chile, then get up and boogie, merengue, cumbria or cueca de Bolivia, to the sounds of a three-man band and tango singer. The bands, often Trio Sud Americano or another local exponent of the genre, perform exclusively in Spanish.

Norah’s Place, 5667 Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood, (818) 980-6900. Open from 5-10 p.m. Tuesday-Wednesday, 5-11 p.m. Thursday, 11 a.m.-2 a.m. Friday and Saturday and 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Sunday. Closed Monday. Beer and wine only. Parking lot. All major cards. Entertainment Friday and Saturday evenings, from 8 p.m. Cover charge: $7.

ROYAL THAI RESTAURANT

The fun-loving Thais like to be entertained when they dine, as anyone who has ever been to Bangkok can attest. What makes Royal Thai Restaurant so colorful is the live entertainment. It’s almost like being in a nightclub on Bangkok’s Patpong Road, full of Thais letting loose, curious Westerners and heavily painted waitresses who look slightly wearied by all the hubbub.

It’s a dark, clubby restaurant, with smoky red vinyl booths. The dining area is long and narrow, with a 30-foot-long row of center tables that head straight into the red and ash blond stage. Thai vocalists perform there, generally women--although there is a male vocalist Sunday evenings--singing a mix of Western-style and Thai ballads. We heard Anocha Suwanalat, sort of a Thai Anne Murray, and Penpim Jittawn, a seasoned balladeer with her own Thai radio program in Los Angeles. The customers are wild for them.

As to the menu, well, it’s quite extensive, a mix of Thai and Chinese dishes. Hor mok is one of my personal favorites, a mousselike mixture of fish pureed in red curry paste with coconut cream. Bean thread ( pad woon sen in Thai) are glass noodles made from the mung bean and served with a choice of chicken, pork or beef. Spicy stir-fried squid, really a Chinese dish, seems to be big with the Thais. And if you’re not in the mood for music, you can always exile yourself to the blue room, away from the stage, and eat in a quieter environment.

Royal Thai Restaurant, 14434 Victory Blvd., Van Nuys, (818) 787-1670. Open from 11 a.m.-3 a.m. Monday-Friday, from noon-3 a.m. Saturday and Sunday. Full bar. Parking lot behind. Visa, MasterCard, Diners and American Express accepted. Entertainment Friday through Sunday evening from 9 p.m. Cover charge: $5 per person.

KEE CLUB

Iranians love to nightclub so much they even bring their children. I saw several children at Kee Club, located in the space that until recently was known as Shater-Abbas. If it hadn’t been for that, I would have sworn I had wandered into a Vegas disco.

Kee Club is a flood of shimmering ebony, with a raised platform stage complete with shiny silver curtain and a parquet dance floor in the center of everything. The walls and tablecloths are a rosy pink. Service is solemn and formal, conducted by Farsi-speaking waiters in black tuxedoes, and food is rather plain, by no means up to the best Persian food in town. Keep it simple--by ordering one of the meaty kebabs such as chicken or chelo, hunks of marinated, grilled filet mignon, eating your way through the mountain of saffron-topped rice that accompanies the meats--and things will be fine.

Entertainment can be quite varied, sort of like Houlihan’s Old Place translated into Farsi. There are occasional joke-tellers, fine if you understand the language; frequent belly dancers, undulating creatures with a more visceral appeal, and grating pop music played on a synthesizer and sung by men and women who wail as if they’ve just been eliminated from “Star Search.”

Kee Club, 13130 Sherman Way, North Hollywood, (818) 765-6600. Open from 11 a.m.-8 p.m. Monday-Thursday, and from 11 a.m.-2 a.m. Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Full bar. Parking lot. Visa and MasterCard accepted. Entertainment Friday, Saturday and Sunday evenings from 10 p.m. Basic charge: On Friday and Sunday night, $15 including dinner, $10 without; on Saturday nights, $20 with dinner, $10 without.

BEOGRAD

Beograd, Serbo-Croatian for Belgrade, Yugoslavia’s capital, may well have the best Yugoslavian kitchen in greater Los Angeles. Think of the entertainment as a kind of gravy.

The management doesn’t, of course. Belgrade native and co-owner Vojkan Kalinic is a professional accordionist who plays folk tunes from the Balkans, Italy and the Slavic countries. Here he uses his instrument to good measure, accompanying visiting Yugoslavian singers who perform in Serbo-Croatian. There is usually a guitarist on hand to give more dimension to the sound.

You dine in a sleek, dimly lit gray room. There are cloths and candles on all the tables. Delicate, delicious cheese burek, in a buttery phyllo crust, or pohovani kackavalj, a breaded, deep-fried yellow cheese with a strong taste, make superb beginnings, and a selection of hearty grilled meat specialties are sure to win you over to this cuisine. Cevapcici are finger-shaped sausages of mixed meat served on a bed of onions. Chicken raznici, chunks of boneless chicken wrapped in bacon, are addictive.

As the evening winds down, sip muddy Turkish coffee and nibble on palatschinken, eggy crepes served warm with a walnut or apricot filling.

Beograd, 10530 Magnolia Blvd., North Hollywood, (818) 766-8689. Open from 5-10 p.m. Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday, 5 p.m.-midnight Friday and Saturday. Closed Monday and Tuesday. Full bar. Parking lot. Visa and MasterCard accepted. Entertainment Friday and Saturday nights only, from 9 p.m. No cover.

SUSHI AKI

If you’re not sure whether these experiences will tickle your fancy, there’s always the option of tickling it yourself. Sushi Aki, and a wonder of modern technology called Laser Karaoke, will get you off to a head start.

This place could be described as sort of a low-tech sushi bar. It’s a wood-filled, modest space with sake barrels by the door, paper lanterns hanging all about and a giant plaster marlin suspended over the sushi counter. The chefs, usually numbering three, are full of jollity--for this type of establishment--and prepare most of the standards plus a few surprises: spider hand roll made with soft-shell crab, shishiamo, broiled smelts and butter-fried enoki mushrooms. There always seem to be a few regulars by the bar waiting for the amateurs to start singing.

And sing they do. Karaoke, Japanese for “empty orchestra,” provides a musical accompaniment for old standards from the ‘40s to the present. You provide the vocals. With the laser system, you don’t even need to know the words. Just pick up the mike, follow the words on a color video screen, and prepare to be humiliated in front of total strangers. I screeched my way through “Don’t Be Cruel,” hopelessly out of my key, and then hit the sake bottle hard. Oh, well. That’s entertainment.

Sushi Aki, 14549 Vanowen St., Van Nuys. (818) 787-9383. Open for lunch from 11:45 a.m.-2:30 p.m. Tuesday-Friday, dinner from 5:30-10 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday and Sunday, from 5:30 p.m.-midnight Friday and Saturday. Closed Monday. Beer and wine only. Parking lot in rear. All major cards accepted. Karaoke Friday and Saturday nights only, from 9:30 p.m. No cover, but there is a $2 per song charge if your check is less than $15 per person.