RESTAURANT REVIEW : Book Soup Bistro Stylish, Struggling

The restaurant space in the Carolco building where Holloway meets Sunset Boulevard has undergone a variety of transformations in the last half dozen years, most under the auspices of the talented Chaya gang. There was the vaguely nautical Flags, which became the hard-to-pin-down, vaguely Sino-French Chaya Diner. This was followed by the listless Mexican restaurant/singles bar, El Chaya. The owners could not seem to find a concept for a vital, self-sustaining restaurant. Finally, the Chayans abandoned the site. After extensive renovations, the bookstore next door, Book Soup, moved in.

Book Soup has long hosted book signings where fans and the visiting author were crammed in among the books and disinterested shoppers. This cafe space was annexed in part to provide a more appropriate venue for such events. But it is also trying to be a full-service restaurant, with varying degrees of success.

Book Soup Bistro has transformed the stylishly stark, slightly sunken Chaya space into a warm room with lots of dark, rosy wood and cozy, anachronistic golden light exuding from tasteful Craftsman-style hanging lanterns. The atmosphere is intimate and intellectual. Small black-and-white portraits of literary figures punctuate the walls; we were seated one night under a young, bespectacled James Joyce. There’s an appealing bar, a bustling open kitchen, a charming outdoor patio. So far as looks go, this is one of the classiest, most atmospheric new restaurants around. If we can’t be in Paris in the ‘30s, we might as well be in West Hollywood in the ‘90s.

One can’t take the bistro appellation too seriously. I suspect that its bookish owners selected bistro over other restaurant terms as much for its sound as its meaning; Book Soup Cafe, Book Soup Trattoria, Book Soup Kitchen might have served the place as well. Those looking for French bistro food will find only traces: a pistachio-veal pate; a nicoise salad, pommes frites .

Already on its second chef, Book Soup seems to have evoked the irksome resident spirits that so haunted the last three restaurants: This one too seems to be struggling for a workable defining concept. The menu is a good mix--you can have a sandwich or three-course meal. You could have a drink, or a cup of joe, or a quick bowl of pasta. But the prices are a little high: a couple of salads, a couple of sandwiches, a couple of nonalcoholic drinks at lunch is, without desserts, mighty close to $50, which makes one think twice about stopping by for a casual mid-day meal.

The Bistro’s biggest problem lies in the service. Sometimes, the service was so slow as to be laughable. What else can you do when you’ve been sitting peacefully on a weeknight in a less than half-full restaurant and nobody takes your order for 30 minutes? And when you finally get food, and nobody checks up on you or clears your plates or notices that you need another drink? You have to laugh or you’d get too grouchy to eat. In a literary, ironic kind of a way, I suppose it’s interesting to see such a pretty, proud, ambitious restaurant display such hubris in erratic service. But I like this place: I want to see happily-ever-after, not the fall of a house of waitresses.

Salads are juicy and satisfying, particularly a wilted spinach salad with pancetta , or a special salad with delicious lamb sausage. Oysters are better ordered elsewhere, as is a too-thick, dull Tuscan bread and tomato soup. Both the grilled salmon and a special opah fish are beautifully grilled and served with earthy pureed beets and roasted potatoes. Half a small, tasty chicken comes with a wedge of polenta, more of those beets: These are all decent, mom-style dinners.

I envied my neighbor’s fusilli with a simple, fresh tomato sauce; my order arrived so undercooked, it was still crunchy at the core, inedible. I sent it back, sat while my friend spooned up a cioppino chock full of fresh seafood that was overwhelmed by fennel. Eventually, another bowl of pasta arrived, this time cooked ever so slightly more--although to reach a true al dente , it needed another three or four minutes in the boiling drink.

The grilled Book Burger is tasty; a grilled ahi tuna sandwich, with crunchy ginger and wonderful knuckly seaweed is dreamy.

The creme brulee is excellent: creamy, studded with fresh berries; a chocolate cherry bread pudding and apple tart pale in comparison.

* Book Soup Bistro, 8800 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, (310) 657-1072. Lunch and dinner Monday through Saturday. Full bar. Validated parking in lot under building. Major credit cards. Dinner for two, food only, $26 to $65.