RESTAURANT REVIEW : Keeping It Simple : * The Wine Bistro is a feast for the eyes as well as the palate. Its lack of flashiness is one of its strengths.

Many newer restaurants try to pull customers in with complex, innovative dishes. More often than not, they leave patrons longing for plain old simplicity.

Simplicity is the strength of the not-so-new Wine Bistro, a restaurant that, for no particular reason, I have always driven right past.

Recently I got the notion to stop in at this modest, comfy cafe, a local CBS Center haunt that is relatively easy to miss amid the hundreds of restaurants that line Ventura Boulevard. Now I’m wondering how I could have passed it up for so long.

Without being particularly flashy or brilliant, Wine Bistro manages to be better than most of the restaurants on this street. The veteran owner, a man named Alain Cuny, is responsible for the popular Le Sanglier in Tarzana, as well as a place called Berty’s in Westwood.

Wine Bistro is my favorite of his three restaurants--especially for the way it looks. The dining room is one of those long, mirror-lined rectangles, the kind of room you might find in a non-touristy Paris arrondissement .

Most of the booths, upholstered in creamy white vinyl and framed by high wooden backs, are shielded by ornate glass dividers with brass posts. And if you fail to get a booth--which you will, if you do not reserve one--you’ll be stuck in the middle of the dining room at a small table.

Lunch is a good value here, and you can order it on weekdays until 4 p.m., when the restaurant switches to its

dinner menu. Lunches at Wine Bistro favor salads, steamed shellfish and various comfort foods: liver, sole, chicken. You can have pasta, too. Though it has nothing to do with a restaurant that calls itself country French, pasta is de rigueur on this stretch of the boulevard.

Grab the off-menu four seasons salad with smoked duck when it is available. (Usually it’s a daily special.) The salad is composed of endive, arugula, rocket and other greens, topped with pieces of smoked duck.

The mussels tend to be the Eastern Establishment type. And, as in any bistro worth its salt, they are piled in a bowl in a sauce mariniere made of white wine, stock, cream and shallots.

I’m also fond of the lunch menu’s sole meuniere , the traditional “miller’s style” sole. It’s nothing flashy, merely fresh white filets dredged in flour, pan-fried in butter and moist from a squeeze of lemon.

Dinners are a slightly different affair here, if only because the business trade is almost nonexistent and the waiters--and the kitchen--seem infinitely more sluggish. The menu at night is a bit more elaborate, and caloric. Things that come unadorned at the noon hour are now blanketed in rich sauces, garnished with luxuries such as morels, sauce Nantua, green peppercorns.

The waiters keep diners abreast of the many evening specials, one of which is almost always a hearty bouillabaisse. This version is about as generous as it gets: clams, mussels, salmon, scampi, whitefish, swordfish and whatever else the chef throws in. You’ll need every square inch of your cloth napkin to finish it.

Calf’s liver is pan-seared and quite tender, served with white onions and crisped bits of bacon. One of the menu stalwarts, grilled fresh salmon with lobster bisque sauce, is delicious, though one might wish for a bit more of the grainy, buttery sauce. I found filet mignon with morels, from the blackboard menu, more of a disappointment. The dried morels came up a bit on the rubbery side.

After dinner, you’ll see a pastry board groaning with the usual assortment of classic French concoctions: a tarte tatin , a puffy Napoleon, a fruit tart with kiwi sneaked into it. I’d describe the pastries as pleasantly lackluster.

I do wish to put in a word, though, for the unique, small wine list this restaurant has. There is a fine collection of vintage Bordeaux wines at prices lower than I have seen elsewhere. An ’83 Chateau Gloria, for example, is only $35, while the lofty ’85 Chateau Lynch Bages, often $125 on local lists, rests at a mere $85 on this list.

Where and When Location: Wine Bistro, 11915 Ventura Blvd., Studio City.

Suggested dishes: mussels mariniere , $7.95; sole meuniere , $10.50 (lunch); calf’s liver, $15.95; salmon with lobster bisque sauce, $17.50.

Hours: Lunch 11:30 a.m.-4 p.m. Monday-Friday; dinner 4-10:30 p.m. Monday-Friday, 5:30-10:30 p.m. Saturday. Closed Sunday.

Price: Dinner for two, $50-$75. Full bar. Valet parking. American Express, MasterCard and Visa.

Call: (818) 766-6233.