RESTAURANT REVIEW : Columbia: ‘70s Feel With an ‘80s Menu

Three older gentlemen whose wives are currently shopping--in Paris--are taking themselves out to the Pasadena Columbia Bar and Grill for dinner. “Isn’t this a comfortable atmosphere?” says one, as they file into a booth. Through the window, trees in the patio twinkle with hundreds of little white lights.

“Very pleasant,” says another.

“Civilized,” says the third. Settled, they order gin drinks.

This new franchise of the popular Hollywood theater-district restaurant is located in the Tanner Marketplace in Old Pasadena, where Pappagallo once flourished. Indeed, the Columbia Bar and Grill caters to similar clientele: older, moneyed Pasadenans. On a Saturday afternoon, the patio is full of well-groomed women and their well-groomed daughters and their well-accessorized babies. Oh, there are a few businessmen, husbands accompanying their wives and a scattering of more casual people, like us, who haven’t seen a manicurist in the last two weeks. On a Friday night, the crowd is sedate, a bit dressy. The younger, hipper set seems to be next door, at the Clearwater.

That’s not to say the Columbia Bar and Grill is stuffy. It neatly fills the gap between Hamburger Hamlet and the Parkway Grill. Khaki shorts, on a warm day, outside on the patio, if you must. Among the tweed and gabardine, you’ll see jeans--with pressed dress shirts.

The decor is quietly retro, unaffected by the last decade of haute restaurant design. The color scheme is green and peachy-pink, the music easy-listening. The patio has comfortable chairs, heaters and a calming, noisome fountain. With walls of bricks, whitened wood and lots of potted plants, this new Columbia owes much to the more genteel fern bars of the ‘70s.

The menu, however, is straight from the ‘80s: a large, daunting pastiche of Asian, Italian, Cajun, Mexican and American dishes. Steamed Chinese chicken dumplings come with a sesame-ginger sauce that’s salty, slightly greasy and actually pretty tasty. A quesadilla with shrimp and wild mushrooms is attractively presented but bland, and generally a dud.

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Some dishes tend to be over-accessorized: An otherwise good smoked chicken salad, for example, doesn’t really need that rock-hard, tasteless slab of papaya; a sauteed shrimp and scallop salad is inexplicably overwhelmed by pickled artichoke hearts.

Thinking that more traditional bar and grill food may be the way to finesse Columbia’s appetizers, I try the shrimp cocktail (five tired soggy shrimp) and the crab cakes (deep-fried, crunchy and otherwise unremarkable). The Caesar salad puts me in a rhetorical stupor: Whence this gluey white Caesar dressing? I’ve been seeing it--with displeasure--on Caesars around town often coupled, as here, with a pulverized cheese that tastes precisely like sand.

Skip the paella, a saffron-infused mishmash of sausages, shellfish, lobster, chicken and peas and keep it simple with the entrees: The best ones are from the grill. Mixed seafood grill has an assortment of beautifully grilled fish--salmon, swordfish, scallops, shrimp. Too bad the orzo , the rice-shaped pasta that can be such a wonderful textural pleasure, is way overcooked and swamped in a lemony herb sauce. Grilled free-range chicken is superb: succulent, hefty, also wonderfully cooked. No complaints about the lamb chops, either, in a mildly sweet mint glaze. These dinners come with nicely stir-fried wax beans, sugar snap peas, carrots and less-than-inspired potatoes--the mashed are a little gluey, the O’Brien’s little cubes of grease.

The dessert tray is most appetizing early in the evening, before the toffee mousse cake starts to slump. Still, it works at our table. We try chocolate crepes filled with white chocolate mousse in a pleasantly tart raspberry sauce. Creme brulee , “bruleed” earlier, is cool on top, but otherwise smooth and pleasurable. Poppyseed orange cake is dry and the frosting way too sweet.

The service is friendly and accommodating. On a slower night, the bus people, bored and looking for something to do, stop by a little too often in efforts to clear our dinner plates. But generally our little requests are humored cheerfully: There’s less ice in the next drink, and a freshly brewed pot of decaf reveals that the coffee here is actually quite delicious.

* Columbia Bar and Grill Pasadena, 42 South Pasadena Ave., Pasadena, (818) 578-0224. Open lunch through dinner 7 days. Full bar. Valet parking. Visa, MasterCard, American Express. Dinner for two, food only, $27-$58.