I’ll Have the RKO, With Radicchio

Nestled comfortably in that marketing niche between the Parkway Grill and the Chronicle, the Columbia Bar & Grill is in many ways the prototypical Pasadena restaurant: a basic grill menu only slightly inflected by New American eclectic cooking; prices in the range that well-off people might find reasonable; a dining room populated almost exclusively by casually dressed-up women and men in dark jackets and ties.

It’s the sort of place you can imagine as the setting for one of those good-life wine commercials, all clinking glasses, well-meant toasts and chuckle-filled conversation.

The menu is pretty much the same as the one at the original Hollywood location--crab cakes and lamb chops and, of course, a Caesar salad. There is also a spicy Anaheim chile stuffed with smoked chicken. The only incongruous element: the pizzas are named after movie studios, as in the Disney or the Universal. In this blue-blood location, they might better be called the Huntington or the Norton Simon.

* Columbia Bar & Grill, 42 S. Pasadena Ave, Pasadena, (818) 578-0224. Pizza, pasta and entrees $7.50 to $16.95.