The Joys of Dining Alfresco : A number of restaurants take advantage of the weather by serving outdoors in a variety of settings.

Dining alfresco is one of life’s great pleasures, especially when the air is balmy, the breeze mild and the company pleasant.

We in the San Fernando Valley have got it lucky. The climate is suitable for alfresco dining nearly all year, and there are a wide range of restaurants serving outdoors. I’ve spent the last few weeks dining in surroundings ranging from sculptured terraces with leafy trees and delightful views to shopping mall patios furnished in home discount plastic, and have had one major revelation while doing this. When the chemistry’s right, almost everything tastes better out here.

The only problem--if you’re planning to do this any time soon--is that summer heat. The Valley gets steamy during summer afternoons, and since these restaurants serve outdoors during the day, it might be a good idea to keep that in mind. So for those of you who require SPF 50 (30, says one comedian, is a flannel shirt), the evening might be a better bet, when the afternoon heat has faded and the Ray-Bans and parasols aren’t quite necessary.

Saddle Peak Lodge

The elegant, swank Saddle Peak Lodge, located about halfway up Cold Canyon in a remote part of Calabasas, is one restaurant where the weekend brunch crowd is definitely heat-seeking. Many of them come looking for a hot, secluded getaway that is still relatively close to the big city. That’s exactly what they find.

The restaurant is housed in a refurbished hunting lodge, a maze of little dining rooms on different levels. The 20-odd outdoor patio tables are among the area’s toughest to get even on hot days, thanks to a great view of the Santa Monica Mountains, brightly colored umbrellas and the good cooking of chef Bruce Boyer.

The menu here is rustic Americana, lots of game, fresh fish and ‘40s-style Continental specialties. Lots of my friends come to enjoy light lunchtime salads such as the one made from endive, watercress, goat cheese and walnuts, or the delicate, cooling fruit soups, ideal, low calorie antidotes to the occasional blast of heat you feel in these hills.

Game such as roast venison is served with a tangy sauce made from juniper berries; there is rack of lamb, pheasant, fresh trout and a variety of North American fish, often culled from lakes and streams. Everything rates to be perfect from the appetizer to the dessert, but know in advance that the experience doesn’t come cheap. This is easily the area’s best alfresco dining and, not coincidentally, the priciest.

419 Cold Canyon Road, Calabasas. (818) 222-3888.

Rubin’s Red Hot

We go from the sublime to the ridiculous when we visit this simple hot dog stand strategically placed under the San Diego Freeway at Ventura Boulevard. What could be more romantic than dining outside under an actual freeway, at little tables that afford a view of onrushing traffic. De gustibus, one supposes.

I like the place, anyway. This is, for my money, the best hot dog stand in Los Angeles, even if it isn’t the ideal first date restaurant. It is easy to find, too, a 17-foot span of authentic railway track from owner Norm Rubin’s beloved El in Chicago. Chicagoans are proud of their hot dogs, the majority of which are supplied by a company called Best’s Kosher Meats. Rubin’s specializes in authentic Chicago dogs, steamed, not grilled. They, too, are supplied by Best’s and they taste terrific.

Sit outside at one of the fire engine red patio tables and chow down on a Big Red, a poppy seed and onion bun splotched with dill pickle, red onion, relish, mustard, a chili pepper, celery salt and a large, meaty frank. If you prefer it spicy, try one of these Polish sausages, too, the perfect foil for deli-style brown mustard and sauerkraut. Great French fries as well, hand-cut potatoes cooked in pure peanut oil. It’s almost enough to make you into a Cubs fan.

15322 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks, (818) 905-6515.

Lautrec-Piacere

The restaurant known until recently as Lautrec, now Piacere, gets my vote for having the Valley’s most beautiful patio.

This is perhaps the most European-looking of all local restaurants. The outdoor patio is a brick-floored courtyard dominated by a huge pepper tree, with an atmosphere rounded out by a burbling fountain, lots of wildflowers and leaves falling constantly onto your table. Even on hot, smoggy days, it feels cool and pleasant back here, shaded by the trees and umbrellas. Just take care not to sit too close to the patio’s wrought-iron gate should you come for lunch. It heats up mercilessly.

The cuisine up to now has been California/French/northern Italian, but owner Jay Regan intends to live up to the new name by putting more pizzas and pastas on the large, eclectic menu. I’ve had everything from blue corn chile rellenos to Oriental-style pot stickers to a chopped salad with smoked chicken and provolone cheese back here, as well as pastas and mesquite grilled items.

Try the delicious roasted Thuel Farm boneless duck or dishes like swordfish, salmon or chicken from the grill.

Pastas can be unreasonably rich, such as the creamy lobster ravioli or the capelacci , a casserole dish brimming with sheets of pasta shielding a spinach ricotta cheese mousse.

22160 Ventura Blvd., Woodland Hills. (818) 704-1185.

Chin Chin

Bob Mandler’s Chin Chin at Encino Place might just be the most popular Chinese restaurant in the Valley, an ersatz Chinese food factory with a slew of patio tables and plastic chairs smack in the middle of the downstairs courtyard at trendy Encino Place.

Encino Place feels like what Tracey Ullman has in mind in that commercial where she “shops, then leaves her husband,” as the ladies lunch crowd is always loaded down with goods in fancy bags.

But it is also where Valley cognoscenti flock for formula Chinese dim sum, those little snacks and pastries so ideal for light summer eating.

Just don’t lose sight of the fact that this food is highly Americanized.

The pantry man puts the wildly popular Chinese chicken salad together from plastic-wrapped, portion-controlled packages of cut-up chicken, fried rice noodles and won ton crisps from an enormous stainless steel tub and pre-shredded lettuce.

Deep-fried won tons have dense, reddish-pink pork interiors; ha gow are steamed dumplings with a rice noodle skin and a minced shrimp filling.

You’ll find a surfeit of noodle dishes, too. Max’s noodle is lo mein noodle in a bland soup; chow fun refers to mouthwatering rice noodles nicely mingled with thinly sliced steak, bean sprouts and onions.

Should you crave something more substantial, there are entrees such as shrimp with lobster sauce, the delicious Hunan chicken and flavorless Cantonese beef.

No matter what you try, you are likely to escape for less than $15 a person.

16101 Ventura Blvd., Encino, (818) 783-1717.

Silver Grille

This is an indoor/outdoor restaurant where you can dine on a sunny, banana plant-filled porch that almost in itself feels like alfresco dining, or on an even sunnier outdoor patio, under canvas umbrellas. The bottom line here is that you get the best of both worlds, something the owner, a man named Silver, has had great success with here in the Valley. (So much so that he’s just opened a Beverly Hills branch.)

Food is quite competently prepared at Silver Grille, especially when one considers that this is reasonably priced for an upscale grill, with a good range of entrees priced between $10 and $15.

Cuisine here is best described as Cal-Mex/American. Such appetizers as stuffed pasilla chili and fresh asparagus are definite winners, the first stuffed with a mild goat cheese mixed with sun-dried tomato, yellow pepper and cilantro, the second a plate full of fresh, snappy spears alongside a delicate tarragon dipping sauce.

Salads like the muscular Caesar come in huge glass bowls. Oriental slaw, a favorite here, is somewhat of a curiosity: chopped cabbage with sliced almond, white sesame, wispy, fried rice noodle and rice vinegar, topped off with a sliced, grilled chicken breast.

If you are in the mood for heartier fare, refer to entrees, your basic grill-and-pasta roundup. Free-range charbroiled half-chicken is advertised with rosemary and garlic, but those flavors are totally masked by intense grilling.

For $19.95, you get an enormous, 19-ounce rib eye with grilled onions, and a dollar less rewards you with charred tiger shrimp--fat, flavorful and more than willing to absorb a lion’s share of lemon and garlic.

Those with stamina may wish to try the killer tiramisu for dessert, along with a cup of good house espresso.

17239 Ventura Blvd., Encino, (818) 784-4745.

Caribou at Sportsmen’s Lodge

We started at a lodge, so we might as well finish up at one. Caribou is the new restaurant at the recently renovated Sportsmen’s Lodge on the corner of Coldwater Canyon Avenue and Ventura Boulevard. If you are lucky enough to secure an outdoor table here--they are at a premium--you should be in for one of the Valley’s most enjoyable evenings.

You’ll find yourself on a makeshift pine forest patio, next to a stream where real fish swim.

The complex just beyond your table is a maze of little bridges, gardens and waterfalls. It’s hard to believe that the traffic on Ventura is less than 100 yards away.

And you’re bound to be equally charmed by what you eat.

You’ll start off with a basket of dense, addictive corn muffins and then progress to a menu of modern American classics, anything from Atlantic salmon in a paper bag to mesquite-grilled buffalo steak.

Consulting chef Raimund Hofmeister is a master of things old and new. His grilled Japanese eggplant salad is marinated in a lime thyme vinaigrette, a perfect metaphor for the Pacific Rim cuisine that Los Angeles champions.

But bite into something like his whole trout pan-fried in hazelnut butter, his terrific, monster-sized, oven-braised lamb shanks and barbecued beans, or one of these magnificent desserts (try the multi-layered strawberry shortcake), and you’ll realize that Caribou is truly a restaurant in the traditional mold.

Long live tradition, and that goes double for the tradition of dining out under the stars.

12825 Ventura Blvd., Studio City. (818) 984-0202.