RESTAURANTS : GRACIOUS GOODNESS : An Expensive Steakhouse With a California Cuisine Twist? Sure. It’s Bernard’s.

Slender beams of light from the ceiling illuminate each table--just the table, leaving the diners themselves in a comfortable murk. The room is hushed. A tuxedoed waiter sets your food down and murmurs, “Do enjoy it,” as he glides away.

Need more clues? The spotlight-dotted ceiling sports antique floral patterns, and the bread tray on the table includes lavash. Aha! This could only be Bernard’s at the Biltmore.

In the early ‘80s, Los Angeles marveled at Bernard’s--an ambitious restaurant in a grand luxe hotel, of all things, which flew in exotic fish from the Mediterranean and dared us to eat a pig’s foot stuffed with escargots. Then Bernard Jacoupy left, eventually opening Lunaria, and chef Roland Gilbert did the same with his own restaurant, Tulipe. More recently, serious competition has shown up on the same block of Grand Avenue with Water Grill and Checkers. How fares Bernard’s today?

Biltmore executive chef Roger Pigozzi and Bernard’s chef Philippe Trosch say they’re reviving the room’s ‘20s-style tradition as a steakhouse but updating it for the ‘90s. OK, these days a restaurant is supposed have a grand theme, but the steakhouse image doesn’t explain why Bernard’s has more seafood entrees than red meat and poultry put together. Altogether, the place still looks much like the old Bernard’s, but with less focus on the culinary cutting edge (that may, in the end, be the true ‘90s theme).

Apart from the surprisingly gutsy Caesar salad, heavy on the garlic and anchovies, and the smoked salmon and a prawn cocktail, the appetizer list veers toward fairly lavish California Cuisine rather than steakhouse stuff. (Although the soups are traditional: a classic lobster bisque with sherry, and the earthy, cream-enriched puree of lentils called “Bernard’s original lentil soup.”)

The list bristles with things like the black pasta purse--a pasta purse to end all, fist-sized and filled with wild mushrooms, a bit of saffron spaghettini and some chewy slices of abalone. You can get crab with papaya, shallots and Marsala sabayon sauce that is not excessively sweet, served under a pastry crust shaped like a crab shell. Salmon “sausage” is better described as a salmon cake in mellow butter-and-yellow-tomato sauce. And think of the crab cake as a crab crepe, a disk of crab meat served in a shallow silver bowl with an olive-oil mayonnaise tangy with mustard and capers.

You can indeed get steaks here: a T-bone with onions, a dry-aged prime New York and even that ancient favorite, chateaubriand bouquetiere. There’s also a roast of the day (we could be talking pork, lamb or veal here), served from a grand silver cart, and a game meat of the day, which might be chewy but very flavorful sauteed boar chops topped with crumbled bacon. The rack of Sonoma lamb (rather pricey at $30 for three chops) is sweet and simple, with a crust of eggplant puree for added interest.

The grandest-looking entree is a big, sweet lobster stuffed with a savory mixture of crab meat, shallots and bread crumbs--more flavorful than the crab cake, to tell the truth.

They’ll serve you Dover sole in butter sauce, the waiter filleting it at your elbow as you wait, but mostly the entrees are as modern as the appetizers. Wonderful red snapper is fried in a wrapping of shredded potatoes--not the newest idea under the sun, but nowhere better done than here, the potatoes nice and brown and the sauce sweetly fragrant with chervil--which happens to be the cheapest entree. At lunch you can get a tuna burger of hand-chopped ahi, a big patty served on seven-grain toast spread with Dijon mustard.

In a couple of places, the novelties go right around the bend in true California tradition. The grilled breast of chicken comes in an insipidly sweet sauce flavored with an exotic, vaguely citrusy fruit called Cape berry. The Petaluma duck, prepared two ways, involves some wonderful grilled breast meat, but the “other way” is a confit with a liver-like flavor, served inside a baked pear. Think twice.

The desserts include very good tarte tatin with caramel sauce, lemon tart, chocolate cake (with a rather oily frosting), and a “trilogy” of tropical fruit sorbets with a thin almond cookie folded like a tostada cup. You get the obligatory raspberry-and-chocolate combination in the form of berries on top of a mousse, served in a cutesy cup molded out of white chocolate. The ice cream-stuffed profiteroles are unusually good, neither soggy nor stale.

The real choice at dessert time, though, is the ominously named black plate. It’s a selection of sweets: a mold of frozen sabayon topped with wine-flavored gelatin with a single blueberry trapped in it, a crepe rolled up with raspberries and cream, and bite-sized samples from the pastry cart.

Forget the ‘20s stuff. Bernard’s is for now--if you want pampering, a sense of occasion and ‘90s-style California Cuisine. And if your accountant OKs it.

Bernard’s, Biltmore Hotel, 5th Street and Grand Avenue, Los Angeles; (213) 612-1580. Lunch served Monday through Friday, dinner Monday through Saturday. Full bar. Validated valet parking. All major credit cards. Dinner for two, $60-$128.