Restaurants : CALIFORNIA COSMOPOLITAN : At Mackey’s, Traditional Steak-and-Chops Fare Is Sparked With the Unexpected

Pasadena’s a nostalgic sort of burg that seems to consider every third structure in town worthy of historical preservation. It has a streak of restaurant nostalgia, too. For a long time, Pasadena adored above all others the Chronicle, a high-quality re-creation of an 1890s steakhouse. Then, in 1988 the town thrilled to the opening of Club 41, a 1920s-style steakhouse. Club 41 looked antique from the start and has developed a startling patina of age since then; I wouldn’t be surprised to see it get a historical-preservation plaque by sundown. Neither of these, though, really prepares us for Mackey’s, Pasadena’s latest venture into the past. To be sure, it’s a steak-and-chop house like its precursors, but it harks back only about 50 years: Manhattan, circa 1948.

A subdued room of clean, angular lines with a gray-and-pale-yellow color scheme, Mackey’s is subtly illuminated by small lights along the top of the linen-covered walls and tiny cobalt-blue lamps on the pillars. In short, here we have a quiet, urbane, flattering environment for digging into steaks and chops.

Astonishingly, one learns that the owners of Mackey’s also run Green Street, the restaurant next door, and the two couldn’t demonstrate a greater contrast. Green Street, Pasadena’s favorite shoppers’ lunch spot, specializes not in chops and steaks but in sandwiches, omelets and quesadillas served by ponytailed waiters, and it apparently saves the planet on a regular basis by . . . well, serving lots of vegetables, I gather. Green Street teems with sidewalk diners socializing under shady umbrellas; Mackey’s location, only a few yards from Green Street but that much closer to the silent end of Shopper’s Lane, gives it the air of a discreet hideaway.

Mackey’s calls its food “creative interpretations of traditional American cuisine.” This doesn’t mean just adding some radicchio to the plate but conceiving dishes with understated California-style cosmopolitanism. The remarkably tender and meaty blade ribs with fresh ginger-soy glaze resemble Korean kalbi , the beef ribs cut flanken-style, across the bone.

You can get fried sausage patties as an appetizer but in up-to-date fashion made of ground chicken and flavored with jalapeno peppers--not heavily, but enough to leave a little piquant memory on the tongue. An assortment of mustards accompanies these patties, though nothing terribly exotic: whole seed, honey, Dijon.

French fries undergo a minor but pleasant creative interpretation: a flavoring of garlic and red pepper on otherwise standard-model fries. The fresh ketchup that comes with the fried onions is a throwback to the tomato ketchup people used to make for themselves, tasting like mildly sweetened tomato sauce with a cinnamon-and-clove flavor. Unfortunately, people who have grown up on bottled ketchup will probably miss the scorched-tomato flavor. I can’t say much in defense of the bruschetta , though. Big slices of Italian bread simply smeared with black-olive paste, melted cheese or pesto make for a fairly crude interpretation of this Italian canape we’ve grown to love (and to mispronounce; listen up, waiters and everybody else, it’s broo-SKET - ta , not broo - SHET - ta ).

The salmon cheesecake brings to mind the bland pimiento-and-cream-cheese sandwiches of a ‘50s bridge party, and since I do not play bridge, I disqualify myself from commenting on it. If I wanted a seafood appetizer, I’d take the mussels in Chardonnay broth: tender mussels with some chopped tomato in each shell.

The entree list may run heavily to red meat, but Mackey’s treatment of vegetables recalls the best of its Green Street veggie heritage. A simple dinner salad consists of fresh mixed greens and big croutons in a surprisingly aggressive balsamic vinaigrette. A steak will come with heaps of wonderful vegetables: roasted new potatoes, grilled sweet peppers, grilled eggplant and crookneck squash, sugar-snap peas so crisp they practically pop in the mouth and carrots of a positively challenging degree of underdoneness.

The steaks also come with an old-fashioned steak sauce of the same family as A.1., sweet and tomato-paste based. You should probably choose the tender and flavorful New York steak. Or maybe the double-cut lamb chops, which come with fresh mint sauce, a tradition so out of fashion that it’s probably due to make a comeback.

The pork chops enjoy a creative interpretation that does them neither good nor harm: a thin maple-syrup sauce that you’ll scarcely notice unless you systematically dip each pork bit into it. Plain and simple, these chops come with fresh, lumpy applesauce and a big portion of garlic-flavored mashed potatoes--without lumps.

Mackey’s unapologetically serves meat loaf in these sophisticated surroundings. It’s a soft model, with herbs and tomato sauce in it, topped with ketchup at one end and fresh basil and thyme at the other. This is the cheapest entree and, with more of those mashed potatoes, probably the most filling. The next cheapest is an old-fashioned chopped steak, like a coarsely chopped lean hamburger patty with grilled onions and steak sauce.

The only real California weirdness comes with the grilled turkey breast, sliced about the size of silver dollars and marinated with cilantro and red pepper--another fairly substantial portion. The weirdness is the pineapple salsa, essentially chopped onion and pineapple with oregano. Mackey’s also offers grilled salmon, swordfish and shrimp, all marinated with herbs and olive oil and cooked perfectly.

The desserts have somewhat less focus than the rest of the menu. The fruit tart is mainstream stuff with a good buttery crust, while the orange-and-poppy-seed cake with lime frosting is on the avant-garde side, and the chocolate sundae (made with McConnell’s vanilla ice cream and served in a soup plate) is a faintly fatigued antiquity. But watch out for the warm chocolate cake. It’s a landmark of chocolate extremism, like a rich brownie soaked in hot fudge sauce. Suddenly this quiet, untrod section of Shopper’s Lane seems not like a sophisticated hideaway in 1948 New York City but a sinister alley in a later New York: This cake is it for chocolate addicts.

Mackey’s, 140 S. Shopper’s Lane, Pasadena; (818) 584-8844. Open for lunch Monday through Friday , for dinner Monday through Saturday and for brunchSunday. Full bar. Validated parking in structure. All major credit cards accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $36-$69.

Suggested dishes: chicken - jalapeno sausage patties, $5.50; blade ribs, $6.50; mussels in Chardonnay broth, $8.95; meat loaf, $10; grilled swordfish, $17; grilled New York Steak, $19; orange-and-poppy - seed cake, $5.50; warm chocolate cake, $5.50.