LIBERTE, EGALITE, SERENITE : A Really Different Restaurant: Quiet, Elegant--and Not Italian

The city called Century has two centers of bustle: the shopping plaza on Little Santa Monica Boulevard and the entertainment complex on Avenue of the Stars. Bright lights, crowds, a desperate search for parking places--this is a city, all right.

But just outside this ‘hood--down toward the less-well-lit end of Avenue of the Stars, in the Twilight Zone where it crosses Olympic--there is a restaurant that knows not the meaning of the word bustle. You’ll find La Chaumiere, a place of deep carpets and unobtrusive waiters, in the quiet (mostly residential) Century Towers Hotel, facing away from Century City altogether. The restaurant’s center of gravity is the Winter Garden--a dark alder wood room that looks out over Westwood and Brentwood, and sometimes you can even see the ocean. Pretty serene.

La Chaumiere has been around since the middle ‘80s and has always dissented somewhat from restaurant trends of our day. Its new chef, Tadashi Katoh, continues the tradition by providing only a derisive number of pastas--one fettuccine dish, a couple of ravioli as a garnish, a lobster soup with fine noodles in it. The rest of the menu is littered with terms from the cuisine of that half-forgotten country called France: paupiettes, tournedos, galettes, even an entrecote . Black truffles are scattered with a free hand.

True, the perspective may be French, but of the post-cream-sauce era. There are only three cream sauces on the menu (one of them comes with that fettuccine). More likely you’ll find yourself reading expressions like “tomato coulis ,” “leek broth,” “clear chervil essence.” A lot of sauces are classic French wine reductions.

Some of the appetizers aim to surprise. Salmon rolls, bars of delicate salmon coated in mushrooms and herbs (very mild--I would have believed spinach), with a spring-roll crust so tightly wrapped you’d say it was fish skin, are served with a red wine sauce flaked with truffle. The galette of crab leg and scallops is a little seafood cake garnished with asparagus and a cloud of deep-fried leek julienne, all in fresh tomato sauce. The mellifluously named crispy pastry leaves with langoustine are not made with filo, as you might expect. The sweet shellfish come between two paper-thin wafers sprinkled with black cumin seeds, in a curry cream sauce.

But when the restaurant serves ceviche, it’s just an exceptionally dainty mixture of chopped shrimp, tomato and shallots, arranged in scallop shells on ice. You can get lobster as an appetizer (a small one, of course) with small vegetables. The duck liver is a pale butter-yellow and tastes a lot like butter with a compote of figs and port.

Among the entrees, the swordfish steak with black-olive relish would not be out of place at a California-cuisine restaurant: perfectly cooked swordfish brushed with a brisk, bitterish olive puree, floating in lemon-grass butter sauce, along with some baby vegetables and fresh lima beans. If you’re not having swordfish, though, the fish dish to get is the paupiettes of Dover sole, where the fillets are wrapped around crisp, fresh shrimp and served in a truffled fish broth.

The meaty side of the entree menu includes a few elaborate creations, such as the medallion of veal loin, which is hollowed out and stuffed with a morel mushroom, then wrapped in veal bacon and served with veal glaze (the menu calls it goose-liver cream, but I don’t believe it). Mostly, though, it’s great, straightforward French meat cooking: a rack of lamb with a mouth-filling crust of parsley, garlic and mustard. Filet ( tournedos ) with a reduction of Cabernet Sauvignon. Roast entrecote steak with a sauce of red wine and shallots, and a square of delicate gratineed potatoes on the side, as neatly assembled as a tiny book.

If you have neglected to ask about the dessert specials or if they’re already gone, you can order from the menu a pleasantly peculiar almond chocolate gateau: four blocks of a fudgy almond-and-chocolate substance supporting a bitter-chocolate structure that looks like a geodesic dome. Or white-chocolate mousse quenelles--three egg-shaped lumps of white chocolate arranged in an orange sauce with three raspberries, each in its own tiny galaxy-like swirl of raspberry sauce and creme anglaise.

The rest offers little in the way of surprise: a warm apple tart (good creme anglaise ); a soft caramel custard; a creme brulee with a sugar crust that for once has a strong caramel flavor, topped with cooked fruits. But who wants surprises? We’re gazing into the sunset, toward Westwood, Brentwood, the ocean. We’re pretty serene.

La Chaumiere, Century Towers Hotel, 2055 Avenue of the Stars, Los Angeles; (310) 551-3360. Open for dinner daily and for lunch Monday through Friday. Full bar. Validated valet parking. All major credit cards accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $67-$92.