RESTAURANTS : DELICIOUSLY DARING : At Quiet, Luxurious Bikini, the Food Doesn’t Taste Like Any Other Restaurant’s

Ten years ago, when American food still meant mainly hamburgers, a local French restaurant famous for nouvelle cuisine in tiny, elegant portions caused a small sensation when it offered a new American menu. Foodies flocked to a Manhattan Beach shopping center to eat Tennessee caviar on blue-corn pancakes, California snails and ravioli filled with chile adobado . They discovered, for the first time, the excellence of native goat cheese and finished their meals with large, handmade chocolates sculpted like Navajo ceramics.

In time, Saint Estephe would abandon nouvelle cuisine altogether, and chef John Sedlar would become famous as the founding father of the Southwestern food movement. As American food rose to its current respectability, and the local reputation of French food waned, people stopped arguing over the merits of Sedlar’s recipes. They began arguing about whether he favored form over flavor, the size of his portions and the price of his plates. Sedlar’s latest restaurant is likely to add fuel to the fires he has already ignited. At a time when most restaurateurs are so frightened by the economic climate that their new restaurants are nothing more than clones of successful older ones--at slightly lower prices--Sedlar’s new place is breathtakingly daring. It’s not cheap, it doesn’t look like any other restaurant on earth--and his food certainly doesn’t taste like anything you’ve ever eaten. You may love Bikini and you may hate it, but you will not be indifferent.

Critics, I suspect, will have a hard time staying out of the former camp. Most of these new places are so boringly predictable--is there a single new restaurant that doesn’t serve tiramisu ? -- that you can’t help being thrilled by Sedlar’s bravery and independence. Others who will be taken with the restaurant are all those who are tired of shouting--Bikini is a grown-up restaurant where you can have a conversation.

The room has a spare, modern air, but you soon discover that this is deceptive. From the fabric on the booths to the shape of the lights, each nuance, each luxurious detail, has been carefully considered. Sit downstairs, and the stairway itself becomes a piece of art, a homage to Marcel Duchamp. Sit upstairs, and you’re either in a cozy, curved booth (celebrities sit there) or on a balcony with the restaurant spread out at your feet.

The food has also been carefully detailed. A little amuse gueule is silly but pretty--a single salsa-strewn scallop in a Japanese painting. And it will definitely not ruin your appetite for the generous portions of food to come.

The menu may accomplish that--at least for the timid. I’ve had guests simply close it up and say, “You order for me.” If you haven’t kept pace with food over the last dozen years, you may find you need a dictionary to decipher the menu, for Sedlar has roamed the world, plucking influences from all over the place. Can you think of another menu that embraces kaiseki , nacatamal , chop suey, ravioli, choucroute , raita , souvlaki and chimichurri ?

There is one dish that will be familiar to patrons of Saint Estephe: the salad, invented by chef Alain Dutournier, that combines sauteed sweetbreads, turnips, peppers, pistachios and orange peel. Sedlar’s faithfulness to this particular dish offers a clue to his cooking, for it is a little treatise on flavor.

Sedlar is a chef who plays with flavors as a musician plays notes, modulating one with the other. His palate is acute, and he seldom wavers. What ties all of his dishes together--no matter which culture inspired them--is the manner in which he cuts through the frills to find the basic structure of the tastes. The ingredients in the sweetbread salad create a perfect harmony; few chefs manage to elicit this depth of flavor from subtle sweetbreads. His Caesar salad may not look like a classic--hearts of romaine are spread on the plate like Miss Liberty’s crown--but you will never taste a more perfectly balanced dressing. Here the garlic, anchovies and egg are combined into something that is more than the sum of its parts.

You see this balancing act in everything. Order a simple tomato soup, and you discover that it has basil and hints of orange that serve only to accentuate the tomato-ness of tomatoes. A veal chop sounds strange, topped as it is with a green- mole -and - white-chocolate sauce, but it isn’t. This may be the single best use of white chocolate ever invented, for it smoothes out the thin sharpness of the chiles, adding a hint of sweetness, a touch of richness and a finesse that the sauce would otherwise lack. Lamb, on the other hand, has the stuff to stand up to really potent spices, so it is given a totally different treatment; the saddle is grilled and served in a wicked green curry sauce, then torqued up with a spicy peanut sauce. On the side, a soothing yogurt raita puts out the fire.

When it comes to beef, Sedlar knows enough to leave basic steak and fries alone. He serves a good, big T-bone with nothing more than a heap of fries and the Argentinian chimichurri sauce (a mixture of olive oil, herbs, garlic and red pepper).

But Sedlar’s heart is in his hors d’oeuvres. Egg foo yong double happiness is a sly take on classic French scrambled eggs with caviar. Sedlar’s are huge--duck eggs--and they are scrambled with gingered duck confit, mushrooms, water chestnuts and bamboo shoots, then spooned back into the shell. His “martinis” are also sculptural--cold soups in icy glasses. I’ve had these in one glass and in two and liked the latter better; the freshness of the tomato soup provides a bracingly clean contrast to the rich, vodka-laced potato soup that is shot through with little bits of smoked salmon and topped with caviar.

Kaiseki-- Sedlar is one of the few American chefs who truly understands the aesthetic of Japanese food--is a gorgeous plate of tidbits. Slices of halibut topped with olive paste are spread across white and red ruffled seaweed; marinated salmon is layered between potato pancakes like some exotic dessert, and the tempura--a construction of shrimp cake pressed between two leaves of ooba, then battered and fried--is a mini-masterpiece. On the side is a wild, intense mushroom consomme.

Even the desserts are not the same old safe, sweet stuff. Actually, the desserts are the least successful part of the menu, the best thing about most of them being the fantastic plates on which they’re served. The passion-fruit mousse, served with candied pineapple and star fruit, seems like just so much fluff, and the tamale dulce is heavy and unappealing. The cardamom-ginger creme brulee is a good idea that misses, and the ivory tower of white chocolate mousse manages to remind you of all the reasons you don’t like white chocolate. But the fresh fruit with infusions is all glowing color--the plate looks like a display in a jeweler’s window, and it sends you out the door with your heart high.

You can’t help admiring a chef like this. Sedlar has gone for broke here, serving dishes that are not familiar, not comfortable, not easy to understand. It is thrilling food for a sophisticated public at a time when most of us aren’t eager to be challenged.

Bikini, 1413 5th St., Santa Monica; (310) 395-8611. Open Monday through Saturday for dinner. Full bar. Valet parking. All major credit cards accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $57-$90.