Nine p.m.: We arrive at Cafe Maurice,...

Nine p.m.: We arrive at Cafe Maurice, and look for a maitre d’. A passing busboy finally points out our name in a small log book, and waves us toward a corner of the bar. A Gipsy Kings tape roars at a level you might associate with Metallica concerts. Everybody speaks French here, including the Americans.

9:20: Nobody in the crowded bar has yet acknowledged us. We approach a waitress, who shrugs. It helps to be French if you want a table at Cafe Maurice.

9:30: I try to order a drink. “I am so- reeee ,” the bartender says. “I do not speak Angleesh.”

9:35: The Gipsy Kings are finally replaced by an equally loud tape of French ballads. I never thought that I would be so glad to hear an accordion.

9:50: We approach the waitress again: “Perhaps there will be soon a table on the patio,” she says.

10 p.m.: There is a table on the patio. It is for two; we are four. “Later perhaps,” she says.

10:15: One of our party chews out, in French, a man who appears to run the place. He corrects her use of the subjunctive tense.

10:20: A young British man, into his third glass of wine, pleads with his date to schmooze up a table, the way she is apparently able to at Trinity or Spago. “Go ahead, Christie,” he says, “Use your magic.”

“This is Cafe Maurice,” Christie says. “The magic doesn’t work here.

10:30: The Gipsy Kings again.

10:35: A booth suddenly materializes--but not for us. We are asked to wait while a table the size of a paperback dictionary is being cleaned up.

“This table is small for four of us,” my friend says. “Really, we’d like that booth over there.”

“I am sorry,” the man says. “Those people, they have reserved.”

“But we have also reserved . . . for 9 o’clock. It is now close to 11.”

“ Ppppppt ,” the man says, making a fluttering hand motion that begins at his shoulder and ends near his waist. “I would like to help you, but it is not possible.”

10:45: We sit down. The waitress brings menus to the table, and her eyes open wide. I think she is surprised that we are still here. I think we’re a little surprised, too.

Cafe Maurice seems designed to dredge up every warm fuzzy you’ve ever had about Paris: a dark room of indeterminate color, mirrored at the back; walls encrusted with reproductions of posters from the Folies Bergere and the Moulin Rouge; beautiful, slender women smoking cigarettes at the bar. People actually drink straight vermouth, wear black and sigh a lot. You may feel as if you’ve been stuck in some fever-dream of Henri Cartier-Bresson.

What you may have heard about the place is that you can eat a pretty good French bistro meal there for about what you’d pay for dinner at the Red Onion, and that the place is more or less hip. This is true. But the other thing is that the odds are about 3-1 against your ever getting a seat, which can kind of bum you out. The menu cover is illustrated with a bold slash of a can-can dancer and the single word “ Formidable .” They’re not kidding.

Once you actually sit down, you’ll find French food as ethnic food, the stuff that is considered “home cooking” by people who don’t happen to eat at home all that much: salad, steak- frites , chocolate eclair.

If you order an entrecote , you get a wafer-thin piece of grilled meat, a little chewy but of decent flavor, garnished with hand-cut but mushy French fries; if you order sole panee , you get a slightly overcooked piece of breaded fish that smells mostly of scorched butter; if you order poulet normande, there it is, chicken in a gummy cream sauce. Hachis Parmentier is more like it: stewed chopped beef buried under a couple of inches of buttery mashed potatoes, which in turn is dusted with cheese and glazed under the salamander.

French restaurant guys seem to like the place--the last time we were in, ex-l’Ermitage chef Michel Blanchet was having an early dinner, and he looked happy. “The food is simple but guud ,” he said, beaming. He must have known that things are a tiny bit slower here before 8 or 9.

The wine card lists mostly cheap, weird-shipper Rhones and Bordeaux that the Wine Spectator somehow never got around to reviewing. (The ’88 Richeterre is probably about as good a Margaux as one might reasonably expect for $22.)

There’s a pretty decent salade nicoise here, tricked out with canned tuna, salty cured olives and a withering blast of anchovy, which is in fact closer to the true junk-food nature of the dish than any of the grilled-tuna/tapenade versions floating around town. There are also giant bowlsful of endive salad dressed in a smart vinaigrette; nice mesclun salads either unadorned or topped with rounds of warmed goat cheese; and giant boiled artichokes served at room temperature with a mayonnaisey sauce on the side. Omelets Parmentier are the good fluffy kind, flecked with herbs, wrapped around tiny cubes of potato that had been sauteed crisp, served with a big heap of salad . . . more than enough food for a light supper, and as cheap as a dinner at Burger King.

Cafe Maurice

747 N. La Cienega Blvd., Los Angeles, (310) 652-1609. Open Tuesday-Sunday, 7 p.m. to 1 a.m. Full bar. Valet parking. MasterCard and Visa accepted. Reservations essential. Dinner for two, food only, $15-$30.