RESTAURANTS : EAST BY NORTHEAST : New Owners Shift Rangoon Racquet Club’s Focus From Old New Delhi to Old New York

It’s quiet in the Racquet Club. Make that very quiet.

Of course, the evening is young and the place will get louder as the hours pass. But rest assured--whatever the noise level, the Rangoon Racquet Club will remain . . . clubby. This is a restaurant that doesn’t bother to put up a sign outside (or to be precise, any sign you could read from a questing automobile) apart from the letters RRC on an awning over the door.

Inside, the RRC looks like a refuge from a tropical climate. The main room, where white latticework spreads above the booths, breathes the aesthetic of the pith helmet. This would be a great place for a tall, cool Pimm’s Cup after a sweat-drenched, mosquito-bedeviled, upper-lip-stiffening game of lawn tennis.

It happens that the Pimm’s Cup (among the cocktails that held the British Empire together) is all I can remember ever having had here until recently. I know I must have had the oysters Serangoon years ago--for the name, if for no other reason--but I don’t remember them. The food never made an impression on me.

These days, the Rangoon Racquet Club has new owners who want to emphasize the food, and this involves abolishing everything, including all the British Raj elements, from the old menu. The Scotch eggs (hard-cooked eggs fried in a carapace of sausage meat), the Malaysian peanut soup and so on are gone. Owners Jerry Prendergast and Scott Kimball’s vision of clubbiness harks not to old New Delhi but to old New York.

Prendergast can often be seen walking around the room, a tall fellow with rimless glasses and a ponytail, keeping an eye on every plate. He freely shares his dream of giving Los Angeles a New York-style grill and will eagerly tell you about the trouble he takes to get the right cut of beef for aging 21 to 28 days.

Yes, these days the aged steak rules this Pimm’s Cup-ish room. If old-fashioned American vernacular cuisine really is coming back, Rangoon Racquet Club will definitely cash in. To be sure, the menu features some good chicken and fish dishes, a remarkable daily vegetarian dinner and a duck of the day, but basically we’re talking about shellfish followed by salad and grilled red meat.

You could start with the daily selection of raw oysters, but don’t be a fool--order the crab cakes instead. They are simply among the best in California. Out here, restaurants tend to use the stringy claw meat and turn out flat, mushy crab-burgers instead of crab cakes, but RRC’s are the real thing: thick cakes made from big chunks of back-fin meat, held together with not much more than herbed bread crumbs. They come with a pleasantly light and sweet cabbage salad.

Second only to the crab cakes is the cedar plank salmon. Don’t expect any particular cedar flavor here, but a nice thin piece of hot salmon in dill-flavored butter sauce.

RRC’s oysters Rockefeller doesn’t really rank with the clams casino, which has a simple and effective bacon topping and is served in the traditional way, on a platter of hot rock salt. There’s also a shrimp cocktail made with big, sweet shrimp and a surprisingly bland appetizer called sauteed spiced shrimp.

Or you could get a salad. Caesar salad, for instance. The RRC’s version tests high on anchovy, low on garlic and Parmesan, which may not be everybody’s idea of a Caesar, but it does taste fresh and clean and you could put away a lot of it.

One thing to note about the other salads, such as beefsteak tomato and sweet onion, is the range of dressings offered. Vinaigrette, Thousand Island, buttermilk blue cheese with chives--we see their like all the time. But how often do we have a choice of Russian dressing, or green goddess? Green goddess dressing has just about disappeared from the earth, but its old-fashioned combination of anchovy, mayonnaise, parsley and herbs is appealing and might be due for a comeback.

The aged steaks certainly are good, as tender and meaty as the new owner boasts. Entrees include filet mignon, petit filets, double cut lamb chops and aged rib steaks. The surprising thing is that the steakhouse crew doesn’t slight non-red meat. Or even non-meat--the daily vegetarian dinner might consist of string beans (excellent, crunchy ones), baby corn cobs (fresh, not canned), spinach, tiny, sweet grilled cherry tomatoes and a slice of baked Hubbard squash.

Whether it’s grilled peppered tuna or grilled swordfish topped with Indonesian sweet soy, the fish is always fresh and beautifully cooked. A breast of chicken comes with caramelized onion, and roasted lemon-garlic chicken is an appetizingly browned whole bird with a sort of diluted pesto sauce on the side. The duck of the day that I had came in a crisp black pepper crust with a meaty sauce and equally meaty shiitake mushrooms.

At dessert time, the selection always seems to include a not-quite-classic New York cheesecake, a little sweeter and softer than the traditional item but with a good vanilla flavor that leaves a wonderfully plush feeling in the mouth. The fruit cobbler isn’t quite traditional either; the topping resembles an almond crust, making it--who knows, a crisp? Anyway, it’s good. The fruit changes daily; it might be strawberries or it might be a mixture of sour cherries and nectarines.

Other choices might include double chocolate cake, sorbets and creme brulee. But hey, don’t bother--you can get those anywhere. This is the Club .

Rangoon Racquet Club, 9474 Santa Monica Blvd., Beverly Hills; (310) 274-8926. Full bar. Valet parking after 5 p.m. Lunch served Monday through Friday, dinner Monday through Saturday. Dinner for two, food only, $49 - $88.