Turning Back the Clock : Part of a vanishing breed, Mon Grenier has outlived a number of restaurants it had a hand in spawning.

Mon Grenier surfaced sometime after the Flood. It’s still with us.

By now, this anachro nistic French restaurant has outlived a good number of restaurants it had a hand in spawning. Mon Grenier’s owner, Andre Lion--the round, ruddy, Brussels-born chef who can be seen holding court at a table back by the entrance to his tiny kitchen--boosted chefs who went on to open early nouvelle cuisine places in Los Angeles, such as Le St. Germain and Le Restaurant, as well as a number of other places belonging to Mon Grenier’s own vanishing breed.

Lion’s first Los Angeles-area restaurant, Le Petit Cafe, opened during the Kennedy era. Mon Grenier itself is a robust 22 years old this year, though many of the dishes it serves--duck liver on toast, mushrooms Monegasque and salmon en croute , for instance--belong to an even more bygone era.

Grenier is French for attic , and that indeed is what this place feels like. It’s a dark, almost claustrophobic room crammed with high-backed booths upholstered in faded, medieval-looking tapestries. The ceiling is composed of oddly colored panes of smoky, translucent glass and there are other time-warp appointments: pewter plates, a bar jammed into a small wooden armoire, wrought-iron wine racks.

The minute you sink down into one of these booths, you shut out the world. After a moment, one of the waiters--courtly Europeans who have been at the restaurant for many years and shuttle about with an easy grace--will come by and offer you a vermouth cassis and then vanish for an unspecified period. This will give you time to read the collection of brass plaques on the wall behind your booth, each etched with the name of a valued customer, like the charitable contributors at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

You may have to wait awhile before either Gigi or Zsa Zsa, one of the two headless mannequins wearing the evening’s menu, is hefted over to your table. And when one of them arrives, prepare yourself for your waiter’s long, heavily accented description of every single dish, a litany more relentless than the slow movement of a Mahler symphony. On busy evenings, the food may take even longer, because everything is cooked to order here. You don’t come if you’re in a rush.

At least three of the appetizers employ foie gras , the fattened liver of duck or goose. The best of them is salade du Perigord , in which warm cubes of duck liver are combined with fresh green beans and salad greens doused with an herbed vinaigrette. For duck liver on toast, the same rich liver comes in a sauce as rich as the law allows. But the most expensive foie gras appetizer is a travesty. In an age when fresh foie gras is available from Sonoma and New York state, who would pay $18 for a slice of canned goose liver, dolled up on an icy platter? No one I know.

*

The best light starter is probably bittersweet Belgian endive, tossed with blue cheese and crushed walnuts. If you can handle the richness, how about Puget Sound mussels--five plump mussels dressed in garlic butter? They’re rich but top-notch. I’m less impressed, though, by mushrooms Monegasque , five or six caps stuffed with tomatoes, cheese and garlic butter.

The chief problem with the main dishes is a heavy hand with the salt, because the raw materials are of first quality and the sauces are generally deft. What the waiters call “big beef” turns out to be about a three-pound rib chop, and it’s a beaut. Ours came deliciously rare inside, with a crusty surface as brown as shoe polish. “Crisssspy” duck with three sauces may be a tad on the dry side, but little pots of raspberry, amaretto and homey pimiento sauces make this crisp-skinned bird a tasty novelty.

Rack of lamb “Mon Grenier” is indeed a gorgeous piece of meat, five ribs across. Too bad its natural juices have been over-reduced. And can you believe that it is still possible to get a dish like salmon en croute ? It’s a handsome salmon filet wrapped in a buttery pastry shell with mushrooms, alongside a sauce boat of classically crafted sauce bearnaise. This is pre-World War II fare, the sort of food Escoffier popularized a hundred years ago. I’d only order it for nostalgic purposes, because it doesn’t satisfy for very long.

At dessert, the nostalgia continues. You may be tempted to order the very good apple tart known as tarte Tatin , or a rich slice of the restaurant’s flourless chocolate cake atop its pool of creme Anglaise , but don’t. Instead, finish with something like peche cardinale or poire Belle Helene , turn-of-the-century desserts that can really transport you. The one is peach in raspberry sauce, the other poached pear with chocolate sauce, and both served in glass dishes on a bed of vanilla ice cream, under scandalous amounts of whipped cream.

Just think of all this as “The Age of Innocence: The Restaurant.” You can always do double duty on the treadmill tomorrow.

Where and When What: Mon Grenier, 18040 Ventura Blvd., Encino. Suggested dishes: Belgian endive, $7.75; salade du Perigord , $12; big beef, $30-$35; “crissspy” duck with 3 sauces, $21.95; peche cardinale, $6. Hours: Dinner 6-10 p.m. Monday-Saturday. Price: Dinner for two, $50-$80. Full bar. Parking lot in rear. American Express, MasterCard and Visa. Call: (818) 344-8060.