RESTAURANTS : ALL IN THE GAME : In This Rustic Mountain Setting, Buffalo Roam and Pheasants Arrive Under Glass

In the evening you see them tooling out Pacific Coast Highway, up Malibu Canyon Road, east on Piuma Road. They wind through the night and finally come upon Cold Canyon Road, somewhere in the Santa Monica Mountains, but all their headlights will illuminate is a big, emphatic “No Parking” sign. First-timers will pause uneasily in the middle of the pitch-black road until somebody notices the Saddle Peak Lodge lot, practically behind them, with the only parking attendant for miles around.

Saddle Peak Lodge is not cheap, and it’s certainly not convenient, but apparently it’s where everybody wants to go. On weekends, just try to get a reservation there.

Why do people drive all the way out here? Location, location, location--on the rustic patio, you can have true outdoor seating, right in the Great Outdoors. It’s the place for early-dinner sunset watching and for weekend brunch--a big deal here, where the menu ventures well beyond eggs Benedict.

But there’s a lot more to this surprisingly large place than that patio. Downstairs, a wood-and-stone dining room groans under a load of hunting-lodge and Western gear; upstairs, a library full of books from the ‘40s and ‘50s has candles and a sort of countrified Ronald Colman atmosphere, and there’s another room a flight of stairs above all that.

The place has been here since the mid-’30s, and the menu looks it. Here’s another of Saddle Peak’s attractions: ‘40s and ‘50s food. Though you find some ‘80s and ‘90s notes like sun-dried tomatoes and a salad of mixed herbs and lettuces, this is one of the last places around that serves that iconic dish of ‘40s haute cuisine, pheasant under glass. Everybody’s impressed to see the waiter bring your bird under a glass cover, though when you dig in, the pheasant tastes insipid in its raisin sauce.

One of the best appetizers is actually a fascinating case of cross-generational fusion. Homemade pasta has a sort of Alfredo sauce made with goat cheese, sun-dried tomatoes and basil--but the noodles are thick and wide like American egg noodles, to surprisingly luscious effect.

Saddle Peak’s salmon is pleasantly cured in vodka and tarragon and served with an herb sauce that has dill as the predominant note. The kitchen makes its own game pate, of venison, wild boar and buffalo, which tastes like a rough, backwoodsy bologna with lots of cracked pepper.

The rest of the appetizers lean more heavily to the ‘50s: big mushroom caps stuffed with mushy deviled crab meat in a slightly tart red wine sauce; baked oysters under a blackish topping of spinach and fennel, a diverting variation on oysters Rockefeller.

Saddle Peak is known for its game specialties. You can order grenadine of Michigan buffalo, for instance: three thinnish buffalo steaks arranged on a mound of wild mushrooms, onions and sweet peppers. The meat is tender, rich and beefy, but with an elusive non-beef quality about it that is not gamy. In any case, it’s decidedly hairy-chested meat.

The game specialty soon devolves into pork, though. Texas black-boar chops, meatier-tasting than most pork, come with very sweet white peaches and spaetzle, which the menu calls “crisp homemade noodles.” The ranch pork chop doesn’t have as much glamour, but it comes with a successful apple-and-orange compote (and a slightly forlorn corn fritter). The apricot-glazed baby back ribs sound like American-style barbecue, particularly since they come with coleslaw and Boston-type baked beans, but the sweet glaze gives the ribs an oddly Cantonese quality.

The restaurant can also handle the ‘90s taste for fish and duck. Lacquered Long Island duckling, for instance, which has an intriguing sauce--about midway between a raisin sauce and a Chinese black-bean sauce. Salmon cooked in a paper bag with julienned steamed carrots and celery, an extremely old-fashioned French idea, has a Japanese purity of flavor.

But let’s talk about chili. Saddle Peak Lodge does unexpectedly well by its gracefully named kick-ass chili. It’s extremely meaty, moderately hot, roughly fragrant with a variety of Mexican peppers and served with jalapenos, chopped onions, grated cheese and sour cream on the side. It is available as a side dish or as an entree.

Unfortunately, though, the chili would upstage most of the entrees on this menu. A more practical side dish would be the wild rice, with a good fluffy texture and some walnuts mixed in.

The waiters--the most urbane between Malibu and Calabasas--push two of the desserts. One is the chocolate taco, a cocoa-flavored wafer formed into a taco-shell shape that’s filled with white chocolate mousse and topped with fresh berries, with a raspberry “salsa” around it, and the other is a cinnamony poached pear with vanilla ice cream, whipped cream and startlingly crimson raspberry sauce.

Go with the taco. The other desserts prove to be rather plain, like the dense (though good) apple pie, or rather obscene, like the cheesecakes made up like candy bars or topped with chocolate brownies. You’ve driven too far to settle for that.

Saddle Peak Lodge, 419 Cold Canyon Road, Calabasas; (310) 456-PEAK, (818) 222-3888. Dinner served nightly Wednesday through Sunday; brunch served Saturday and Sunday. Closed Monday and Tuesday. Full bar. Valet parking. All major credit cards accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $47-$87.