480 Is a Winning Number in Laguna

Laguna Beach may be cutting-edge when it comes to the more recherche aspects of pop culture, but foodwise, it lags. Three of the city’s best restaurants--Kachina, Five Feet and Sorrento Grille--gained in popularity only after their respective genres (Southwestern, Pacific Rim and Cal/Italian) had not only flowered but begun to wither in Los Angeles.

Forgive me, but it has to be said. Laguna is arguably Orange County’s hippest city, but it remains a good six or seven years behind the local metropolis in restaurant trends. And that’s probably how it’s going to stay.

All this could bode well for the new 480 Restaurant and the restaurant’s chef, Isao Kono, proponents of a style--call it Franco-Japanese for convenience’s sake--that many L.A. foodies already consider hopelessly out of fashion. (Though there’ll surely be a wave of nostalgia for it pretty soon up there.)

Kono is a longtime veteran of the Orange County restaurant wars, having cooked in the Bouzy Rouge Cafe, the Ritz-Carlton and the Irvine Hilton, all places where his creative juices were kept well below the boiling point. But in this new, breezy cafe (great for people-watching along Pacific Coast Highway), it appears Kono has been given carte blanche to create at will. That’s not always good news, but it sure keeps things interesting. 480 Restaurant is eccentric to a fault.

The restaurant belongs to another Japanese native, June Fong, whose husband, Arthur, owns the busy jewelry store next door. The long, narrow main dining room has a rustic, nautical feel, all unfinished wood, twirling overhead fans and snazzy, floral-print banquettes. The best tables, in good weather, are up above the main dining area on a terrific outdoor patio, a courtyard-like space enclosed on four sides. Just beyond the patio is a glass-enclosed bar area, part of the restaurant but far enough away to encourage intimacy.

You’ll have a better chance of getting a table outdoors on weeknights, though in June and July any night is a madhouse in Laguna. If you sit indoors, secure a table next to the French windows that look directly onto the sidewalk, assuring you an entertaining view. It also keeps you as far as possible from the New-Age Muzak tapes (e.g., Enya). For me, this music is one step away from being in a coma.

Thankfully, Kono’s cooking style is anything but comatose. You can begin a supper with an oddball warm salad of black mussels and scampi, for instance, or experience the chef’s highly original take on fried calamari.

Take the calamari if you only have one choice. These are lightly floured and heavily spiced baby calamari, topped with momiji oroshi (Japanese-style grated carrot). They are the smallest and most flavorful calamari I’ve tasted in years, almost like the calamaretti you can find in any trattoria on the Italian Riviera. There is also a grainy, well-fashioned brandy marinara sauce for dipping, though I think the sauce brings one too many flavors to the party.

That black mussel and scampi salad sits all aglow in a pool of pleasing green olive oil. It’s shot through with garlic, tomatoes, yellow zucchini and carrots, all finely diced up in one of the many brunoises (finely minced vegetable medleys) the chef likes to play with. It’s nearly as vivid as some of the concept art that Fong has stuck on the walls, and really tasty.

All the first courses manage to be creative. Great home-smoked lox, thinly sliced and infused with the flavors of fresh dill and capers, is served alongside a pile of rods molded out of cream cheese. Crab cake ravioli, with its tangy stuffing of lump crab meat, comes in a classically rich lobster cream sauce that may be just a little too reduced. The soups are classic, too, with equal measures of Nouvelle touches. My favorite would be the clam saffron soup, mustard-yellow and topped with wispy curls of orange zest and carrot.

The creativity shown in the main dishes makes a few of them miss, big time. Kono’s soba (Japanese buckwheat pasta) is one that doesn’t miss, though. It’s tossed with shiitake and enoki mushrooms, garlic, basil, sun-dried tomatoes and olive oil. The sun-dried tomatoes tend to overwhelm this dish, but it’s still a good marriage of East and West. It’s also a dish that makes you wonder why this healthful buckwheat pasta hasn’t caught on.

But for every dish like the soba , there are two like Kono’s red snapper phyllo papillote, an absurd blend of celery, olives and other clashing flavors. A dish of Atlantic salmon is stuffed with a bland seafood mousse, then wrapped up in a light pastry crust and drowned in an unusual sauce based on the radish. Sound weird? It is.

Apart from the soba , one of Kono’s creations that does work is rack of lamb in mint sauce: double lamb chops brushed with mint on top of a rich demi-glaze sauce that’s full of minced tomato and garlic. What makes this one special is the brik (a North African pastry crust) that wraps each chop. This is like no brik you’ve ever seen. The inside of the dough is forested with rosemary. It’s a wild twist on a classic dish, and a wildly successful one.

After a ride like this, it’s a relief to see rather conventional desserts. The best ones are the poached pear stuffed with frothy hazelnut mousse and the deliciously crusty apple cake, combined with a buttery caramel sauce. The chef can’t take credit for the multilayered chocolate espresso cake (he doesn’t make it), but it’s good too. I’m told they’re still eating cakes like this up in L.A., too, so there’s hope for Laguna yet.

480 Restaurant is moderately expensive. Soups and salads are $4 to $8.95. Appetizers are $5.95 to $8.95. Entrees are $9.95 to $18.95.

* 480 RESTAURANT

* 480 S. Coast Highway, Laguna Beach.

* (714) 494-1468.

* Open 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday, Wednesday and Thursday; 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday; 9 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. Sunday. Closed Tuesday until July 1.

* American Express, MasterCard and Visa.