RESTAURANTS : DINNER’S A BEACH : A Comfortable, Casually Elegant Setting, an Eclectic Menu: This Could Be Malibu

Did they come straight from the hospital ?” asked my guest, shocked to the bone. The baby the young couple were showing off table to table looked 2 weeks old--maybe.

I tried to remind her that we were in a small town called Malibu. Doubtless many of the couple’s friends were having dinner here anyway (half of Malibu seems jammed into Bambu on any given night), and, of course, they would all be asking, “So, where’s the kid?” Ergo, haul the precious little bundle down to the restaurant. My guest shook her head, profoundly unconvinced.

Maybe she just didn’t feel comfortable in Malibu, and that might be a problem. Bambu, buried deep in a collection of boutiques, is one super-Malibu place--it could be the town’s communal front parlor.

Picture a spacious room done in sun-bleached hues, staked out with massive brass-trimmed maple columns, illuminated by a skylight during the day. On one side of the room is a sushi bar; on the other, a regular bar manned by a former Le Dome bartender; along the back wall, a display kitchen dominated by a huge verdigris copper panel. In the little palm-filled patio out front, smoking is allowed, if not wholly approved. If Malibu’s not your kind of town, Bambu can get on your nerves.

However, my guest liked the highly eclectic food. Some of chef Lisa Stalvey’s dishes have an Italian flavor, others suggest Japan (that’s apart from the sushi and tempura--Bambu boasts that it will cook anything you request as tempura), and quite a few are crazy California Cuisine or plain old American. You can even detect a whiff of Germany in the most likable of the generally good appetizers, the grilled duck sausage, because it comes on a bed of red cabbage cooked with apples and currants.

Popo chicken is shredded chicken and ginger steamed in Napa cabbage leaves and served with Chinese plum sauce. The linguine with shrimp is just that, except that the sauteed shrimp are very smoky, with snow peas and grated cheese scattered around. Seared scallops come in a slightly sweet-and-sour sauce sprinkled with corn kernels, bits of sweet pepper and blackened sesame seeds. However, the crab cakes--which taste more of cooking oil than crab--take a second seat to their accompanying crunchy salad of red cabbage, carrot, peppers and bits of black seaweed in a sweet rice-vinegar sauce. And the grilled salmon in filo bundles suffers from doughy, underdone filo.

Anything on the imaginative vegetarian menu can be ordered as an appetizer, such as the black-bean lasagna, which resembles a luscious, mushy, lemony enchilada topped with toasted walnuts. Or you could start with something that’s technically a side dish, such as “kick-ass” French fries enlivened with peppery spices and Romano cheese. A few asparagus spears fried in translucent tempura batter and served with a little miso soup make a pleasant, bargain-priced appetizer.

While you’re pretty safe with the appetizers, you gamble on the entrees. Bambu always cooks fish beautifully but often doesn’t know what to do with it. Take sesame-garlic-crusted Chilean sea bass: sounds great, tastes insipid. The broccoli-hazelnut puree with the seared salmon is a big, soggy, sweetish mistake. If you want fish, go for the simple stuff, such as the grilled yellowtail with snow peas and enoki mushrooms.

The steakhouse smell of scorching beef that fills Bambu tells you how many fans the 20-ounce “cowboy” steak has. Nothing fancy here, just steak (sliced up a la nouvelle cuisine) with mashed potatoes and mustard-sauced eggplant. I had trouble with the lamb chops, though--nice and thick, sure, but rather scorched on the outside. The rosemary-potato casserole that accompanies them looks like herb-infused, soggy potatoes Anna.

I’d stick to birds as a main course. The grilled, boneless free-range half chicken is nice and brown, served on a succotash that seems to be largely white beans with some very good smashed sweet potatoes. The roasted free-range turkey is surprisingly good: thinly sliced turkey breast is arranged on a crunchy mixture of okra, Napa cabbage, sweet peppers and long beans. There are also mashed potatoes and a ripe blue-cheese sauce. No, really--it’s great.

The dessert list has only a few surprises--pineapple chunks in the creamy creme brulee; a raspberry pie that looks full of raspberry jam (it’s not that sweet, though); white chocolate cheesecake with brownie bits; very good sorbets, especially mango. My guest claimed to find a chunk of garlic in the tiramisu , though nobody else at the table did. Either the kitchen really did drop some garlic in the tiramisu, or Malibu was getting on her nerves.

*

Bambu, Malibu Country Mart, 3835 Cross Creek Road, Malibu; (310) 456-5464. Lunch and dinner served daily; brunch served Sundays. Full bar. Parking lot. All major credit cards accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $36-$84.