Restaurant Review : Following the Salt Trail to Puck’s New Playground

It’s Saturday afternoon at the popular Wolfgang Puck Cafe on Montana, where Luma used to be, and boy, does that space ever look different. Gone is Luma’s elegant sophistication; enter Barbara Lazaroff’s yellow and green walls, noisy tile work and, overhead, a protruding clump of big, senseless beams checkered with color. And this room is toned down compared to Puck’s Universal CityWalk cafe, where the colors, tile work and cartoony facade are so amped they’re borderline nightmarish. But this, after all, is the civilized, urbane Westside and the visual hysteria is tempered.

Today, Lazaroff is present, having herself videotaped talking to customers. The woman responsible for the look of her husband’s restaurants dresses with a flair that echoes her interior design--Princess Leia’s hair, a leather jacket patterned with colorful slices of fruit. The older couple next to us congratulates her on the birth of her son Byron 13 days before.

These cafes are Puck’s answer to such chains as California Pizza Kitchens and Crocodile Cafes--upscale, tricked-up casual restaurants that will no doubt be as emblematic of these times as ‘50s diners and ‘60s coffeeshops are for theirs.

The short-lived Eureka notwithstanding, Puck has the magic touch. He knows what his public craves. In this cafe, Puck appeals to that basic American affection for salt. The food is salty in the way that french fries, potato chips and hot dogs are salty--pleasurably, addictively salty. I don’t mean to imply that chef Guy Leroy’s food is junk food--it’s made, actually, with fresh, excellent ingredients--but it does provide all the pleasures of junk food: big obvious tastes and generous portions. In terms of marketing, this is brilliant. Because as noisy and visually hyper as the room is, as salty as the food is, people are lining up and waiting 45 minutes and an hour for a table.

Byron’s butternut squash soup, a velvety orange puree that tastes mostly of cream, would indeed be as bland as baby food without a swirl of ground red peppers.

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Typical excess is found in a salad of roasted eggplant, tomato and fresh mozzarella, which might have been perfectly fine drizzled with good olive oil. Instead, it is deluged with a homogenized balsamic vinaigrette and a generous scoop of olive and caper tapenade.

Spicy Asian shrimp salad is like a carton of good to-go Chinese shrimp with vegetables all mixed up with baby greens. Deep-fried popcorn shrimp are good and sweet with a perfect crunchy crust.

Pastas are made fresh and, of themselves, toothsome and tasty. There’s nothing subtle about the sauces or toppings, however. Barbara’s fettuccine (yes, almost the whole family has a dish in their honor) sports broccoli, colorful peppers, sweet perfectly cooked shrimp and an excessive amount of oily, intense ginger-cilantro pesto. Sauteed scallops, also skillfully handled, are served on a springy linguine that’s squid-ink black on one side of the noodle, white on the other; again the sauce, a spicy Chinese black bean concoction, is plentiful and far from discreet.

Half a grilled chicken is a great bargain at $9.50; it comes on a scattering of pale but crisp and salty onion rings and a minor mountain of mashed potatoes.

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Excess is truly inappropriate in the baked salmon’s saffron aioli, which is as yellow as French’s mustard. Too much saffron invariably imparts a scorched, medicinal flavor. In this case, a friend dipped into the bright yellow stuff and exclaimed, “What’s this? Burnt rubber?” The salmon itself was a lovely piece of fish.

Puck’s designer wood-fired pizzas are, by now, universally known and either you like the soft, slightly spongy crust and his jazzy flavor-bomb toppings or you prefer another style of pizza. Certainly, there’s never a dull (or saltless) bite in the marinated shrimp pizza with leeks and sun-dried tomatoes. I, personally, prefer a simpler prosciutto pizza; one without goat cheese, where the prosciutto isn’t shredded.

Desserts, as might be expected, tend toward the gloriously sweet. Even the tarte tatin, which seems quite delicious as it is, wears a thick coat of caramel sauce and a cloud of whipped cream.

* Wolfgang Puck Cafe, 1323 Montana Ave., Santa Monica . (310) 393-0290. Open 7 days for lunch and dinner. Full bar. Visa and Master Card accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $27-$55.