A Big Place to Have Small Talk

There are plenty of night clubs in town where you can go to see and be seen. The beauty of the very newest of them, Sanctuary, is that you can do all that and be heard at the same time.

“It’s a little louder than most restaurants,” says Dimitri Cristoforidis, one of Sanctuary’s owners (there are 20), “but it kind of upsets me when people call it a club. We had the idea to do something different. We want to rediscover the lost art of conversation. I’m thinking of Paris, or Barcelona.”

This is a great place for celebrity spotting and people-watching, the beauty of it being you don’t have to wait until you get home to gossip about them.

The women tend to favor outfits that reveal their underwear through creative uses of sheerness and brevity, while the men are mostly GQ model types in fabulous sport coats, especially the dark, foreign-looking ones at the bar who wiggle their eyebrows up and down like the crocodile in “Peter Pan” every time a blonde in a see-through dress walks by.

You can, and should, wear your best dress here, as long as it’s black, short and less than a week old. The lights are dim enough to disguise wrinkles on your face, but not so dim they’ll hide a party frock that screams Ross Dress for Less.

There are three separate spaces here, each with its own design theme. The 1931 building on Robertson Boulevard is familiar as the former Cafe Morpheus. Before that, it was the headquarters for the Beverly Hills chapter of the American Legion, which still meets here once a month. “I do think there are ghosts here,” says Cristoforidis, happily perpetuating a cherished rumor.

The decor in the main dining room is inspired by the Barcelonan architect Antonio Gaudi. The walls undulate and ripple in sensual abandon, like the firm, sculpted muscles of an expensively kept boy toy. Barcelona meets Beverly Hills, and the result is tastefully decadent.

Basking in the warm muted color scheme and light this night were part-owner Pamela Anderson of “Baywatch,” at a banquette with several friends. Across the room were actor Jim Carrey and girlfriend Lauren Holly, guests perhaps of part-owner Costas Mandylor, Holly’s co-star on “Picket Fences.”

Upstairs, the Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired lounge is gothic, torchy and claustrophobic, just the way Wright would have wanted it. “The tiles, the sconces, the mirrors, all are Frank Lloyd Wright designs,” Cristoforidis says. This is where the live music for the main room originates, the band squeezing around a grand piano on a balcony overlooking the main dining room.

The back room is a tall-ceilinged space that manages to be cavernous and voluptuous at the same time, with a huge fireplace and curtained booths. Live blues and jazz are on offer Tuesdays through Thursdays.

Two walls are dominated by enormous reproductions of paintings by Gustav Klimt and Francis Bacon, while a third is taken up by a pencil drawing of a nude by Renoir. The picture is enlarged to such a terrifying extent that Paul Bunyan could use it as a marital aid. You won’t see this on “Baywatch.”

“I think it’s fabulous,” Cristoforidis says, “though there were people who found it a little lewd.” The implication is that those people can stay away in droves and not be missed.

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Where: Sanctuary, 180 N. Robertson, Beverly Hills; (310) 358-0303. Reservations essential.

When: Dinner 6 to 11 p.m. Bar menu until 1:30 a.m.

Cost: Dinner for two with wine and gratuity, about $130. Bar menu $9-$14. Wines from $20. Wine by the glass $5-$7.