RESTAURANTS : NO-MISS SWISS : Unpretentious, Affordable Andreas Goes Well Beyond Chocolate and Fondue

U npretentious sounds like faint praise for a restaurant, though if you dine out often, it may have an attractive ring. And Swiss doesn’t exactly conjure up culinary visions either. How much cheese fondue and chocolate can anybody eat?

But there’s Swiss, and then there’s Swiss: Andreas, which I’m afraid we have to call an unpretentious Swiss bistro, leans more toward French Swiss. Apart from a risotto and a few pastas, that means two or three uniquely Swiss dishes and a lot of French country and haute cuisine offerings.

Best of all, the right-hand side of the menu really lacks pretense: Entree prices soar no higher than $13.25. Traditional French frugalite , together with Continental bonhomie (owner Andreas Tessi likes to chat with the guests), may explain why there are usually two or three tables of French-speaking customers.

The dining room itself is definitely unassuming, even downright stark. A colorful, if sketchy, Tuscan landscape and some huge, grotesque black-and-white canvases dominate the walls. Four columns in the center of the room have been rigged up with swagged fabric, suggesting a four-poster bed or, maybe, a puppet theater.

One of the two Swiss appetizers, air-dried beef, looks a little like a semi-inflated football, but one you’d want to eat: dried beef sliced paper-thin and layered over a mound of arugula, artichokes and olives. Richly flavored and pleasant to chew, this meat puts the usual leathery American beef jerky to shame.

Naturally, Andreas serves cheese fondue, made here with Muenster cheese melted onto roasted new potatoes. It’s served with salad on the plate, so the tangy dressing inevitably gets into the melted cheese. It may not be as much fun as actually dipping things into melted cheese for yourself, but it’s plenty of fun anyway. An even better appetizer, which also comes with salad and potatoes, is the cured baby salmon. It tastes as if it has been cured with sugar, salt and Pernod, judging from the dense, pleasantly chewy texture and hint of anise.

From here on, we’re mostly in French territory, with a salad topped with tender, well-browned duck confit or one garnished with sauteed sweetbreads (a special). A cliche like steamed mussels poulette still has charm when made with strictly fresh mussels and a light, milky broth. On the other hand, the soupe au pistou is a little too authentic, the kind of bland potato-and-carrot concoction you’re likely to find in a frugal French pension ; the basil sauce and grated (but not fresh) Parmesan can’t save it.

Soupe au pistou usually means a soup made with fish--ocean fish, which, understandably, is not part of the oldest Swiss food tradition. Andreas serves several seafood entrees anyway. The most impressive is grilled salmon in a brilliant yellow saffron-and-Pernod sauce, which comes with diced vegetables and a mound of brown and wild rice. Roasted whitefish appears on a hearty background of white beans and garlic sauce, stylishly covered with thin-sliced zucchini woven into a lattice. Grilled sea bass with a garnish of chopped tomatoes and pureed sweet corn owes something to California as well as to France.

The rest of the entrees have an appealing, homey quality--perhaps from a French home that likes its meat well done. The braised baby lamb shank may be on the dry side, but the flavor is correspondingly concentrated. A strong meat reduction, which may have some tomato paste in it, lurks among the mashed potatoes.

Meat, particularly game, frequently gets the basic French saute treatment. I’ve had sliced venison in a gooseberry sauce and rabbit in a slightly sweet cider sauce countered by tart, cooked apple slices. Both the rabbit and venison were specials.

There’s one indubitably Swiss entree: emince de veau Zurichoise , bits of veal and veal kidney in a mustardy cream sauce, served on knopfli , irregularly shaped little dumplings, much like German spaetzle but lightly fried. It looks dull, just a big plate of tan stuff on off-white lumps, but the tangy sauce and the intriguing crunchy-chewy texture of the knopfli (and the kidney) keep it interesting.

Andreas does not seem to have its heart in dessert. The creme brulee has a nice, creamy texture; the apples are thoroughly caramelized (and apparently glazed with apricot) in the tarte tatin , and there’s a nice hazelnut-flavored ice cream assembly called dauphin glace , similar to an Italian semifreddo. But the flourless chocolate cake and the cocoa-heavy chocolate mousse are standard-issue stuff, and the profiteroles are rather doughy.

No matter. Just have the dauphin glace , and congratulate yourself on the heft of your pocketbook as you leave. At these prices, you’re losing money if you don’t eat here.

Andreas, 8115 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles; (213) 653-7351. Dinner served daily. Beer and wine. Valet parking. Major credit cards accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $30 to $49.