RESTAURANT REVIEW : Indian, Italian Most Reliable on 5-Cuisine Menu at York

Millions of words are being written about L.A.’s multiethnicity at the moment, so this must be as good a time as any to consider York Restaurant and Bar.

It’s an intriguing idea: a self-styled melting pot of Italian, American, Chinese, Indian and Mexican dishes. What it lacks at present is a spirit or center--something our detractors are accusing the city of, come to think of it.

At City Restaurant in Hollywood--the one local restaurant where melting-pot dining comes off with outstanding grace--recipes freely cross ethnic boundaries, often mingling two or more cooking styles with creative flair. York Restaurant relies on a more conventional M.O. The menu is simply divided into five ethnic categories, each one containing familiar dishes that have come to be touchstones for their cuisines.

In other words, don’t come here looking for crossover cooking like Mexican-Chinese, say, or Indian-Italian. But if you’ve been dreaming about a restaurant where you can order tandoori chicken with a side of angel hair pasta, this is probably the place for you.

It helps to know that owner Chander Alagh is a native of New Delhi, and that head chef Salvatore Cavallo, an Italian, was long executive chef at Virgilio’s on La Cienega. This surely explains why Indian and Italian dishes are the most reliable things to eat here.

You dine in a cavernous, high-ceilinged space with no decor to speak of. The floor is covered by a giant red carpet, the walls are white and the ceiling covered with dark, roughly finished paneling, all adding to the sense of vastness. Even when this place is crowded, in fact, it feels almost empty.

The lunch buffet is a positive steal at $5.99, given that York’s kitchen staff is solid and capable. It’s a long steam table loaded with up to a dozen hot entrees daily: chicken enchiladas, stuffed cabbage, Mongolian beef, saucy barbecued beef, slightly dried-out lemon chicken, chewy vegetarian lasagna, fried rice and a variety of fruits and salads. It’s easy to eat oneself into a multiethnic tizzy in this setting.

Dinners are more restrained, even if portions do occasionally get out of hand. I do like the samosas as a first course. The little pastry triangles have savory fillings, which might be minced, spiced beef (not very Indian, that) or a more usual curried potato and green pea mixture. I wish they weren’t prepared in the microwave, though--that red-hot skin and cold center is a dead giveaway.

Kebabs from the restaurant’s tandoori oven--you have a choice of lamb or chicken tikka --make more reliable starters, served with fresh hot naan bread. Both these meats are marinated in yogurt, herbs and spices, then served in large cubes on a sizzling platter. There’s a coarse but tasty mint chutney to go with them.

For dinner, try comforting pastas like capelli d’ angelo, where angel hair is served (though the menu doesn’t say so) alla checca, with fresh tomato, basil, garlic and olive oil. You can have either fettuccine or spaghetti with unctuous pesto sauce. Chef Cavallo is also an old hand at such dishes as chicken Marsala, lasagna and sausage with red sauce and sauteed bell pepper, all of which are made with uninspiring competence.

I like the Indian dishes better, even if the flavors have been scaled down. Tandoori chicken is appropriately soft and ruddy, bedded down nicely with sizzling onions and peppers. A dish the menu calls “fresh vegetable” turns out to be alu gobi, a stew of cauliflower and potato that can be blistering hot. Here it isn’t, but mix it with the butter rice that accompanies it and you have a dish that would pass muster in almost any north Indian home.

Some of the other dishes, however, take a little getting used to. The American category’s prime rib, though a healthy slab, is quite fatty, and served with a mealy, overcooked baked potato that crumbles at the touch of a fork. A “Chinese” grilled teriyaki chicken (psst: I think they meant to say Japanese) is downright bizarre--big hunks of white meat in a sticky sweet sauce with a huge hunk of uncored, grilled pineapple in the center.

The restaurant is weakest when it comes to dessert. Frankly, there isn’t any, except some tired store-bought carrot cake. The owners promise to stock desserts soon, though. Hey, no one said this multiethnic thing was going to be easy.

Suggested dishes: lamb tikka, $4.95; capelli d’angelo, $6.95; tandoori chicken, $6.95; fresh vegetable, $4.95; naan, $1.50.

York Restaurant and Bar, 8930 Corbin Ave . , Northridge, (818) 886-9675. Lunch and dinner 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Monday-Friday, 4-10 p.m. Saturday-Sunday. Full bar. Parking lot. MasterCard and Visa accepted. Dinner for two, $15-$25.