435 North Disdains the Trendy

The new 435 North is a neighborhood restaurant in the kind of neighborhood where the local liquor store sells more Champagne than Coors, where that cute bauble in the window could cost the equivalent of an average guy’s yearly salary, and where the gossip at the next table about who’s sleeping with whom might just end up on the cover of the Enquirer one week later. The neighborhood is Beverly Hills.

In trying to please its clientele, 435 North--in the space that once held the dim-lit Continental house Romeo and Juliet--presents food that is fashionable but not trendy. There’s a chopped salad, a Caesar salad, a spinach salad, a shrimp salad, chicken salad too. Pizza and pasta show up in various forms. Salmon comes with a hoison-honey glaze; tuna gets a sauce of olives, capers, tomatoes and garlic. And of course, there’s meat: rack of lamb, beef tenderloin and sauteed duck breast. The chef here knows how to cover all the bases. He’s even put scampi, crab cakes and a vegetable plate on the menu.

If some of the food is a bit dull, no matter, this is a place for the Beverly Hills experience: a sunny patio, a glass of Chardonnay and pianist who knows all the changes to “The Wind Beneath My Wings.”

* 435 North, 435 N. Beverly Drive, Beverly Hills, (310) 273-2292. Entrees $7.50 to $19.50.