A Haven for the Urban Rustic

Wood-grilled is a key phrase on the menu of the new restaurant Hearth. Consider wood-grilled shrimp skewers on a feta-spiked Greek-style salad, or pizza with wood-grilled eggplant and roasted garlic, or wood-grilled acorn squash, which shows up with the herb-marinated spit-roasted lamb. This is a restaurant that wants to provide every urban rustic comfort.

Chickens rotate on spits, where they acquire a flame-roasted deep-brown sheen. The dining room is simple, but stylish. Olive oil is served with your bread, the waiters are friendly and there’s all that wood-grilled stuff. Also, there’s plenty of rosemary around--on roasted potatoes, on top of pizza, on servings of penne and on plates as garnish.

It’s not slick, professional cooking, but food that might show up on the rustic wood dining table of an earnest dinner-party host or hostess with a shelf or two of Mediterranean cookbooks. Mashed potatoes, for instance, are more lumpish than they should be. Even still, this is bound to be a popular place.

Hearth is part of the ever-expanding world of the Authentic Cafe, just down the street. This newest outpost--replacing the Authentic’s more basic, bakery-focused Homemade Kitchen--will certainly provide relief for the crowds who jam the original restaurant.

Last week, an occasional hungry scout would break away from the Authentic line to peer inside the Hearth’s front window. But the lookouts would always return to the safety of the Authentic line--the Hearth was full, but not crowded .

Hearth, 7615 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles, (213) 933-5001. Entrees $7.95-$11.50.