RESTAURANT REVIEW : Promenade’s Yankee Doodle Semi-Dandy

I have to admit, the first thing I knew about Yankee Doodle was macaroni and cheese. Macaroni and Sonoma goat cheese. I’d read the recipe for this Yankee Doodle Noodle in the Food section of The Times and the idea of the dish stuck in my food-haunted imagination.

Yankee Doodle, on Santa Monica’s Third Street Promenade is basically a glorified pool hall--or should we say Old Glory-fied pool hall. The theme and color scheme is predictable. Hint: It could double as a Ross Perot headquarters.

There are red walls, red chairs, blue skirts on the buffet table, white light streaming in through the wall-to-ceiling front windows.

Sports, that all-American activity, plays eternally on several dozen televisions, and, down in the pool hall, on a large white screen. And then there is the constant satisfying thwack of those heavy pool balls colliding, a noise like bones shifting in the head.

On my first visit I was focused primarily on the macaroni and cheese. As a prelude, three of us split a terribly average Caesar salad, and spinach-and-cheese dip. The dip was both very good and unwieldy--the large hanks of fresh and still slightly crunchy spinach were impossible to scoop up and contain with a tortilla chip.

When the baked macaroni and cheese arrived, I was not immediately thrilled. One of those things I like about m & c is that sheet of toasted cheese on the top, however leathery, however scorched. Instead, there was a light smattering of bread crumbs. Otherwise, I was not disappointed. Petite macaroni were suspended in a mild and compelling cheese sauce. The portion was generous, more than even this m & c addict could handle.

Also nice was a penne special, with fresh vegetables and chunks of Brie . The chef here clearly has a good hand with pasta and cheese.

Then there was the barbecued chicken: a fat half-chicken skinned and slathered with spicy brown sauce, accompanied by more sauce, baked beans and a heap of what looked like lumber, mill-ends of one-by-twos weathered to a dark brown. These mildly frightening objects turned out to be MoJoe potatoes, a form of colossal French fry hewn from clearly Goliath spuds and peppered with an odd orange spicy substance. This huge plate of all-brown food was more intimidating than tasty, macho in the sense that Paul Bunyan might have liked it. A tamer--and tastier--chicken dish is the grilled breast, served with nice little home-fried potatoes.

The next time I went to Yankee Doodle, I met a friend for lunch and pool in the midafternoon. The daily $4.75 lunch buffet was still out, but in a ravaged state. The Asian-style chicken and noodle salad tasted gingery and good, only the noodles--regular old spaghetti--were mushy. A sandwich of grilled mahi mahi on French bread was decent and came with dark, spicy curly fries that were wonderful and a red pepper aioli that tasted off. Our waiter was nowhere to be seen, so I helped myself to some mayo from the buffet line. After we finished, we waited . . . and waited to pay our bill, and then waited for our receipt. The best news was that with our lunch, we were eligible for an hour of free pool.

I am no pool shark, but the cues seemed straight, the tables seemed level and well-tended. The crowd ranged from teen-agers big-eared in their summer haircuts to crusty old guys squinting through half-frame dime-store glasses. We had a great time.

Other menu items ran the gamut in quality. Pizzas could be ordered with such things as eggplant and Gouda cheese, smoked oysters and caviar, but were soft-crusted and fairly ordinary. Jambalaya was surprisingly delicious, full of sweet shrimp, moist chicken and good garlicky andouille sausage. A salad of beefsteak tomatoes and Maytag blue cheese will be better later in the summer when tomatoes are tastier. The $4.75 lunch buffet, which consists, among other things, of various salads, meat loaf, barbecued ribs, those tiny hamburgers known as White Castle “sliders,” is popular among serious carb-loaders, children and pensioners alike.

Yankee Doodle, 1410 3rd Street Promenade, Santa Monica, (310) 394-4632. Lunch and dinner seven days. Major credit cards. Metered parking nearby. Dinner for two, food only, $25-$50.