RESTAURANTS : AN INDOOR OUTING : Larger Portions and Smaller Prices Make Picnic a Kinder, Gentler Version of Ma Maison

Patrick Terrail unfolds himself from the booth and begins to work the room. The man who once owned Ma Maison moves to the table in the center. He bends over, kisses hands, kisses air. Slowly, majestically, he circumnavigates the small room, stopping at each table as if this were his restaurant and he wasn’t just another customer. The seats are filled with former patrons of Ma Maison. To one woman he sends a bottle of Champagne. With another he flirts; she blushes, and her bejeweled hands flutter up to pat her coif.

It’s no accident that the many who lament the death of the first Ma Maison rejoice in the recent birth of Picnic. There are no Rolls-Royces out in front,the phone number’s not unlisted, and the place is pretty small. Still, if the ghost of Orson Welles were going to choose a table in town, it would probably be one of these.

He’d certainly find the food familiar. It was, after all, Claude Segal who came to rescue Ma Maison after Wolfgang Puck’s departure. Segal arrived from Paris and wowed the food world with his prowess. His fortunes have improved in the interim--this time around Segal actually owns the place (with partners)--but his cooking seems to take its cues from the past.

The room is looking backward, too: Picnic, with its white lattice work and plein-air mural, looks like nothing so much as a French restaurant of the ‘70s.

But one thing is very much of the present: This is fancy food at unfancy prices (most entrees are in the $15 range). And portions have changed: In the heyday of nouvelle cuisine, you needed five courses to fill you up. At Picnic, it’s a struggle to plow your way through a single dish.

Take the warm salad of veal shank and oxtail. It’s an enormous pyramid of lettuce, stacked until the plate can’t hold any more greens, and then heaped with huge meaty pieces. There are baby turnips and baby carrots too, and if that weren’t enough, a nasturtium. It costs $6.50. It’s easily enough for a meal, but it’s only a first-course salad. I liked that salad a lot, but it lost some of its appeal when it turned out that the other salads were almost identical. Salmon salad is the same pyramid of slightly limp greens, the same dressing, the same nasturtium, but garnished with strips of salmon and a frizzle of fried sweet potatoes and leeks. The mushroom-and-sweetbread salad seemed sadly similar. Ditto the smoked-duck-breast salad.

The best of the appetizers is filo layered with sliced tomatoes, spears of asparagus and rounds of goat cheese--a witty take on lasagna that is elegant, delicious and, like the salads, unbelievably generous.

Skip the soups--the chilled tomato and artichoke with basil is particularly insipid--and be prepared to be disappointed in the pasta dishes. They’re not bad, but most French chefs seem to think that naked pasta needs to be covered up and made respectable. Segal is no exception: His poor penne comes weighted down with caper berries, anchovies, olives, roasted pepper and enough garlic-wine sauce to drown a triple serving.

Segal is at his most French--and most proficient--with the entrees, which have their roots in nouvelle cuisine (whitefish in a coat of peppercorns with a red-wine reduction), cuisine classique (beef topped with marrow in another red-wine sauce) and cuisine rustique (chicken grilled with lemon, thyme and lavender). He loves the alchemy of sauces, making them from Petite Syrah, Pinot Blanc, Pinot Noir and Cabernet. He is happy in his vegetables--with one dish there are shredded leeks, with another stuffed zucchini blossoms. He revels in potatoes: Picnic is one of the few restaurants that still makes those magical puffs of air called pommes souffles.

But sometimes the sauces seem under-reduced, as if Segal hadn’t had the time to finish them. The beef culotte comes out on a wonderful bed of onion marmalade, but the marrow on top is cold and unappetizing. The lamb is generously, and beautifully, served, but it isn’t very flavorful. It’s clear that corners have been cut to keep prices down.

But when everything is on, the food is terrific. One night a duck special, a pink circle fanned out on a deep-golden bed of sauteed apples, was a wonderful reminder of the great days of French food in Los Angeles.

Desserts, on the other hand, are a reminder of how much has changed in 20 years. They seem sad and old-fashioned. In those days, we might have been so impressed with the notion of tarte tatin that we’d put up with this soggy version. We might have forgiven this rather leaden Napoleon. We might even have overlooked the fact that nobody bothered to pre-bake the shell on the lemon meringue tart. But for most of us, those days are past. The only dessert I’d gladly eat again is the sorbet.

To some people, though, even the desserts seem swell. The woman at the next table, for instance, happily finished every miserable morsel of her flourless chocolate cake. She put down her fork, looked across the room at Patrick Terrail and reached for her husband’s hand. She smiled as she stroked it and said, “This place makes me feel young again.”

Picnic, 8771 W. Pico Blvd., Los Angeles; (310) 273-1166. Open for lunch Monday through Friday, for dinner Monday through Saturday. Full bar. Valet parking. All major credit cards accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $40-$62.