RESTAURANT REVIEW : Tried and True : Little China is a simple, cute cafe with a menu that features old standards, but the cooking shows real flair.

I’m not sure what prompted me to try Little China, a Mandarin-style cafe located directly across the street from Universal City Nissan. But I know what brought me back.

Normally, it takes daring or unusual dishes to get me through the door of a Chinese restaurant--say, steamed sea bass with yellow chives and pine nuts. Or even better, the stunner of minced pork, shrimp, green bean and dried bean curd skin I ate for lunch last week at Lakespring Restaurant in Monterey Park.

Well, in Monterey Park, Chinese restaurants have to feature something unusual--it’s a competitive market. The Valley isn’t, so we tend to have mom-and-pop places like Little China. It fits the pattern: a cute, simple place with a glass front and hard chairs. Dishes are ordered from a counter, then hustled to your table by the courteous staff.

So why did I try it? Maybe it was instinct. As soon as I was seated, I had a sudden rush of good feeling. Never mind that the menu lists nothing but old standards; it boasts a zeroed-out MSG symbol, definitely a badge of honor in a Valley Chinese restaurant. Above all, the smell of cooking oil coming out of the kitchen was unusually fresh, another good sign.

So this week it’s back to moo shu pork, pan-fried noodles and kung pao shrimp. No problem. A few of Little China’s versions, cooked by a shy chef who seldom peeks out from behind his wok, have real flair; they’re the state of the art.

Pot stickers and paper-wrapped chicken are two good beginnings. These items are often mundane in lesser hands, but Little China’s pot stickers, for example, have a firm, chewy skin, golden brown on one side, and their filling exudes hot, tasty juices when the skin is pierced.

Paper-wrapped chicken is a misleading name these days, though at exclusive Hong Kong establishments the minced chicken, with its ginger and soy flavoring, still is cooked in parchment (for about five times the price of what you pay here).

Here, as in most places, it’s cooked in foil. The chicken softens beautifully inside the foil triangles and blackens slightly. You’ll be fine if you open them with care. If not--whoops, burnt fingers.

On the other hand, a couple of the starters aren’t worth a look. Little distinguishes the cafe’s murky, pungent hot and sour soup from any of a hundred others locally. And I, for one, don’t see the appeal of the Chinese chicken salad, though it’s a big seller here. Its dressing is sweet enough to make your gums throb. Forward, then, to the wok.

I can’t praise Little China’s moo shu pork enough. What comes to the table are four enormous Chinese pancakes, stuffed to bursting, looking sort of like extra-large burritos from an East L.A. snack stand. The filling, however, is a delicate saute of cabbage, carrot, pork, egg, julienne bamboo and tree ear mushrooms; what you taste is mostly the egg with subtle undertones of the mushrooms and the meat. Smeared with a little plum sauce, it’s a masterwork.

Two lesser but nonetheless deserving dishes are twice-cooked pork and kung pao shrimp. Twice-cooked pork is a specialty from Hunan province that is meant to have a fiery tang. The dish is called twice-cooked because it is supposed to be steamed pork finished in a wok with green pepper, onion, cabbage and an abundance of chiles. I’ll tell you now, they don’t hold back on the chiles.

Many customers seem to favor another spicy dish here, the kung pao combo, composed of shrimp, chicken, beef, mouth-numbing fagara peppers and a large handful of heat-blistered peanuts. I want to try to talk you out of ordering it. Sure, it’s a nice idea to combine the meats, but I say the kung pao idea works best when the palate isn’t so crossed up by a multitude of flavors. Try it with the fresh-tasting shrimp alone, and I promise the dish will make you sit up straight.

Most of the rice and noodle dishes are simple and tasty, as befits the straightforward style of this kitchen. (On the other hand, the vegetable dishes, such as the one-dimensional spicy eggplant and Sichuan-style bean curd, border on the monotonous.)

There are no desserts and no alcoholic beverages, though nonalcoholic beer is offered. Little China also delivers in a limited radius within Studio City, North Hollywood and the east side of Sherman Oaks.

Who needs yellow chives and pine nuts?

Where and When

Location: Little China, 3535 Cahuenga Blvd. W., Los Angeles.

Suggested Dishes: Pot stickers, $4.95; twice-cooked pork, $6.95; kung pao shrimp, $7.95; moo shu pork, $5.95.

Hours: Lunch and dinner 11:30 a.m. to 9:45 p.m. Monday to Friday, noon to 10 p.m. Saturday to Sunday.

Price: Dinner for two, $14 to $22. Parking lot. No alcoholic beverages. American Express, MasterCard and Visa.

Call: (213) 969-8838.