Restaurants : IT WAS INEVITABLE: PC FOOD : At Luma, Food Is Prepared Without Milk, Sugar or Eggs. Sometimes They Are Missed.

In its first few weeks, Luma was filled with two kinds of people: movie stars and chefs. The movie stars were there because the room and the food make them look good. The chefs were there because they were looking for an early clue to a new direction.

There are several clues. The first comes with the bread, served with a small pot of orange stuff where the butter ought to be. Ask for butter instead, and you get this reply: “We have no dairy products in the kitchen. Try this pumpkin spread--it’s made of pumpkin, tahini, miso , caramelized onions, oregano and basil--I think you’ll find it’s delicious.” You might. I didn’t.

The second clue is on the menu. “We use only the finest-quality ingredients available, free of chemicals, additives and preservatives. Our food is prepared without the use of eggs, sugar or dairy products.” Mammals are also absent from the menu. There are plenty of animals that swim or fly, but nothing that prowls around the ground. Lots of restaurants, of course, do this unself-consciously--think of Matsuhisa or Seafood Strip--but at Luma, freedom from red meat, sugar and milk is a politically correct way of life.

“Luma,” says the menu, “is dedicated to healthful, elegant dining.”

Elegant is the operative word here; this is not health food as we know it. The dining room is seriously luxurious, with high ceilings and extraordinarily comfortable chairs. Cheryl Brantner (she also did Bikini, Pinot and Patina) has designed this room as a temple to health and wealth. The room is cool, as befits a place of worship, but the attention to detail is extraordinary; the acoustics are so good that at most tables you have the amazing feeling of being simultaneously surrounded by and divorced from the sound in the room. There is one exception: a table smack in the middle, where the acoustics are so bad that the air seems to snatch the words from your mouth and send them flying out the window.

The wine list is impressive. The service is swell. The waiters wear Armani. The menu is so unusual that you know the visiting chefs are gauging the reaction to this food, wondering if we’ll all be eating like this in a few years.

I hope not. Chef and co-owner Eric Stapelman and his chef de cuisine Robert Smith (both came out from the New York Luma) are very talented, and much of the food is impressive. But I found myself wondering if anybody in the kitchen actually tasted the food. And if they did, could they seriously have imagined that the rest of us would want to eat it? I was eager for seconds of half of the dishes; I fervently hoped never again to put the other half in my mouth. This is the most schizophrenic stuff I’ve ever been served.

Consider the appetizers. I thought the grilled portobello mushrooms--giant caps, beautifully charred on the grill-- were absolutely delicious. They were served with charred endive and radicchio, both a fine foil for the fungi. At the same time, orecchiette (little “ears” of pasta) with smoked duck, lentils, caramelized onion and cracked pepper were so salty that it took your breath away. The kitchen may not approve of sugar, but clearly there’s no proscription on salt. On the other hand, sea bass tartare , a beautiful dish, was so lacking in salt as to be absolutely tasteless.

The best dish I had at Luma was an appetizer that brought out the essential qualities of the vegetables that went into it. Long batons of parsnips, fried into fritters in a slightly sweet batter, were arranged across a bright green bed of sauteed spinach. Sauteed orange chanterelle mushrooms were strewn on the side. A lot of imagination went into the combination of these flavors. But the worst dish I had was also an appetizer. Japanese mountain potato with asparagus in sweet miso would have been remarkable only for the dullness of the flavors had it not also arrived at the table looking as if it were alive. It was covered with those large flakes of dried bonito that are so light they appear to be breathing. There is nothing so disconcerting as a moving plate of food.

Most of the appetizers fell somewhere in between. I liked the crab-and-potato short stack--basically potato pancakes filled with crab meat--very much. I thought that “peasant salad” made nice use of hard-cured salmon, scattering it about the plate as if it were bacon. And the “Luma Verde” was a wonderful salad of 16 different greens.

The entrees tend to be good--when they’re not too salty. Partridge, for instance, was a fine rendition of an often-dry bird. I liked the tiny, roasted cipolini onions on the side. But the bird sat on a bed of sauteed vegetables so salty that I literally can’t tell you what they were.

Poussin was also delicious, but the potato-fennel puree under it was mashed into mealiness. Is this, I wondered, what happens when you mash potatoes without milk?

The single pasta dish I had at Luma-- cavatelli with broccoli di raab , tomatoes and black olives--was fine. The Portuguese shellfish soup was better than that. Tender shellfish were bathed in an intense saffron broth enhanced with the forthright flavor of aged, smoked olives.

But then you get to dessert, and onto shaky ground.

It is certainly possible to make good desserts without sugar or dairy products; in fact, there are a couple of respectable granitas here. But I’ve always thought the substitution of fructose, honey and maple syrup (upon which the pastry chef seems to rely rather heavily) for refined sugar rather silly. This chocolate cake, for instance, is very sweet and quite fine, but nobody would pretend that it was good for you.

And then there’s the lemon tart. Traditional lemon tarts rely on four major ingredients: lemon, butter, sugar and eggs. Given that this menu prohibits the use of three of the four, why would the chefs attempt to make it? Luma’s lemon tart is just about the worst thing I’ve ever tasted.

What’s wrong with the tart is exactly what’s wrong with the restaurant. We need to eat more healthful food, and I’m thrilled to do it in such luxurious surroundings. But these chefs have more sensibility than sense. You want to get rid of butter? Fine. But with so much wonderful olive oil in the world, why inflict that pumpkin stuff on the dining public? You want to make sugar-free desserts? Great idea. But why attempt cakes and tarts when there are so many terrific fruits in the world, and wine to poach them in?

Luma could be a fine restaurant--and it may well offer a clue about the shape of things to come. There is so much to like here: the wonderful ingredients, the superb service, the classy room, the comfortable chairs, the great acoustics. But you can’t help hoping that the chefs will soon become confident enough to stop playing with their food.

Luma, 1323 Montana Ave., Santa Monica; (310) 451-0900. Open for lunch Tuesday through Saturday, for dinner nightly. Full bar. Valet parking. Major credit cards accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $60-$100.