RESTAURANT REVIEW : A Mishmash of Asian and Mediterranean

There is a T-shirt on a rack hanging outside of a gift shop next to Schatzi on Main. Emblazoned on the shirt is Arnold Schwarzenegger. He’s pointing right at you. You’ll Be Back , he promises.

He isn’t speaking to me, yet clearly some people have taken this edict seriously. For a weekend night, Schatzi is doing a business that would make most restaurateurs a bit green. The bar is lined with drinkers watching the fights on TV. Designer Adam Tihany’s innocuous, comfortable dining room, with its coved brick ceilings and woven wicker chairs, its odd copper light fixtures and fat columns sprouting ivy, is full of businessmen, families, a goodly young adult crowd and, of course, tourists. Through French doors, on a lovely patio, there’s a long table of handsome young men in identical white shirts: a fraternity come to carouse at the Terminator’s.

Schatzi has been open for three years now, and things here have changed. I no longer saw Hawaiian shirts on the service staff. (In fact, for the first 35 minutes we sat in our booth, we saw no service staff at all, much less a cocktail.)

Also, the menu has done an about-face. If Schatzi’s food was once criticized as unimaginative and dull, it will be so no longer. Except for the short list of Austrian specialties, virtually every dish is as overwrought as possible. Chef Robert Cocca’s cooking, a mishmash of Asian and Mediterranean flavors, may evoke mixed feelings, but boredom won’t be chief among them.

The trouble is, there’s no telling from reading the menu what’s actually going to show up on the plate. The fried calamari appetizer places a heavily breaded fried squid atop a bed of deep-fried (“crispy”) spinach and then saturates both with a heavy, dark-brown sweet and sour sauce inexplicably described on the menu as “spicy marinara.”

With only a scattering of fresh sprouts, the sashimi salad is less a salad than an upended tuna bowl: a heap of sticky rice, raw ahi, pink pickled ginger and ponzu sauce.

“Gina’s Bruschetta” is such a loose interpretation of bruschetta and such a large plate of food, I was actually frightened to discover it was my appetizer : four large wedges of naked pizza crust that had been topped with fresh tomato and goat cheese, plus a green salad. Duck spring rolls may be enormous and bland but at least they’re recognizable.

The best entree we try is the vegetable plate: a pretty, interesting selection of beautifully steamed and grilled vegetables on more of that sticky rice. Other entrees exhibited a murkiness in concept and flavor. The duck, although overcooked, is still moist and rich, but its accompaniments--a pinch of deep fried sweet potato threads and three leaves of arugula--are mere garnish: We wish there was more of something else to eat, something that would give us a break from the duck’s relentless richness.

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The filet mignon with “onion nest,” “tempura potato” and arugula salad looks like a leafy meat hat: Again, the side dishes are garnish, except for the salad component, which is rendered borderline inedible due to an extremely salty dressing. Medallions of swordfish, also overcooked, are crusted with ginger and herbs and set in a pungent, confused mixture of wine-y onions, spinach and deep-fried sweet potatoes.

Austrian specialties are, comparatively speaking, very square, even gloriously so: meat, potatoes, vegetables. The Wiener schnitzel, made with good veal, is golden brown, excellent with a squeeze of fresh lemon. But why were the garlic mashed potatoes such a strange, unappetizing brown color?

Knockwurst here is especially juicy and delicious; bratwurst less so. Best of all is a grainy mustard.

Desserts are enormous. A perfectly good banana cream pie is tricked up with chocolate crust, chocolate sauce and an internal vein of chocolate. Linzertorte is about as tasty and moist as a granola bar. We’ll stick with a buttery apple strudel served hot with rich ice cream.

The fraternity, however, is finishing dinner with cigars from Schatzi’s own humidor. A blue cloud rises from that table.

* Schatzi on Main, 3110 Main St . , Santa Monica. (310) 399-4800. Open for lunch Mondays through Fridays, open for dinner 7 days. Brunch on Saturdays and Sundays. Full bar. All major credit cards accepted. Dinner for two, food only $44 to $80.