Mr. Frenchy, Meet Okra Winfrey

It’s almost certain that Fred Eric, throughout his childhood--despite probable scolding from unimaginative adults who didn’t see the beauty in, say, a gravy-topped volcano made from mashed potatoes--played with his food.

He hasn’t really stopped. At each Los Angeles restaurant in which he’s cooked--Flaming Colossus, Olive, the Lipp and now the brand-new Vida--his food has been rolled and twisted, molded and stacked, impaled with spears of vegetables, served on glass bricks instead of plates.

Now that he finally has a place of his own--in the space that was most recently home to Mark and Stephanie Carter’s Duplex restaurant--he has a whole building to play with. Bamboo drips from the main dining room ceiling. The bar, half-spherical, is lit by an orb of light, and a few tables are set low to the ground for a kid’s-eye view of the crowd. The staff wear modified Mao jackets, all in chocolate brown.

There’s a pasta called Mr. Frenchy, basically a grilled-meat pot au feu on pappardelle; also something called Okra Winfrey Gumbo, a brothless, deconstructed version of the Creole dish, nicely spicy, with a sort of risotto cake made from red beans and rice. Rarely satisfied with meat, potatoes and vegetables served in the ordinary way, Eric offers a kind of layer-cake concoction made from the elements of an old-fashioned steak dinner: a base of Yorkshire pudding frosted with mashed potatoes, then creamed corn and finally the steak, with a buttercream-like smear of horseradish. Believe it or not, it’s a good steak.

The most amazing-looking dish, though, is the Beef Babcock, a tin-can-size cylinder constructed of bright yellow polenta studded with tomatoes, onions and chunks of braised beef, with a pool of stew juices that flow down the sides at the touch of a fork like, well, lava from a volcano.

* Vida, 1930 Hillhurst Ave., Los Angeles, (213) 660-4446. Pasta and entrees $11-$17.