Clearwater Cafe: No Matchbooks, No Red Meat

No restaurant provides more reading material about itself than the new Clearwater Cafe in Pasadena. The people who planned this restaurant--the University Restaurant Group, which also runs Ocean Avenue Seafood, Pine Avenue Fish House, the Water Grill, 555 East and I Cugini--want you to understand that a lot of thinking has gone into both its food and environment. Local school kids crayon the menu covers; the restaurant accommodates vegans but not smokers; instead of souvenir match books, there are souvenir boxes of seeds.

If you want to know the nutritional content of a fish you might be eating, you can consult a thick notebook in the entryway. If you want to know personal details about the farmers who grew the restaurant’s vegetables, read the restaurant’s newsletter.

If you’re just hungry for dinner, go straight to the menu. Ignore that the restaurant makes a big deal about calling Chilean sea bass by its proper name, Patagonian toothfish, and order it. It tastes pretty good. So does the cioppino, a nicely spiced broth with Dungeness crab, prawns, clams, mussels and calamari. There’s no red meat, but this is a large menu--lots of pastas, some grilled chicken, fish that’s seared, roasted or grilled--and as at any new, ambitious restaurant, not everything works. But hey, you’ll leave here feeling so good about yourself.

* Clearwater Cafe, 168 W. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, (818) 356-0959. Pasta and entrees, $8.75 - $14.95.