Orchestrating a Picnic of Note : Before heading to the next Hollywood Bowl concert, fill your basket with goodies found near your shuttle stop.

The ritual of picnicking on the hilly grounds of the Hollywood Bowl before a summery evening concert is one of life’s great pleasures. On our side of the hill, concert-goers have the added option of taking special buses directly to the bowl from strategically placed Valley locations. That is a stroke of luck for people like me, who prefer the driving left to someone else.

It’s easy to arrange a picnic under those conditions as well. The four bus locations listed below are adjacent to places that offer surprises for the picnic basket, from ethnic haunts to elegant restaurants, all preparing fine foods perfectly suited to alfresco dining. Take the wicker basket down from the attic and bring a hearty appetite. Why limit a bowl picnic to homemade ham sandwiches and wedges of baked Brie?

Here are four picnic ideas, each convenient to one of four bus locations for bowl-bound passengers. All are destined to make people on the next blanket wonder why they didn’t think of the same thing.

Near bus location at 10801 Ventura Blvd.

Few cuisines are as well set-up for outdoor eating as those of the Middle East. Life in dry, warm climates is particularly picnic-friendly, and so are the healthful, tasty dishes cooked up by Israeli-born Judah Amir, chef-owner of Amir’s Falafel.

The falafel sandwich is something of a religion in Israel, a hot pita bread stuffed with five or six deep-fried golden orbs of mashed garbanzos, parsley and spices. Amir’s makes the Valley’s best falafel, but his hot and cold salads, grilled meats and tasty finger foods are ideal for creating a dream summer picnic. What’s more, Amir will pack your foods in spill-proof, snap-top plastic containers or compartmentalized foil trays that keep individual dishes separate.

Have Amir grill about two pitas per person. At 25 cents a pita, it won’t exhaust anyone’s budget, and it will sate the average person. Falafel balls are $2.50 a dozen, and you’ll need to order extra lettuce, tomato and onion, plus a small container of the sesame-based sauce called tahineh, to assemble an authentic falafel yourself.

The combo salad plate, for $6.99, is loaded. It’s a symphony of flavors and colors itself: the popular parsley and bulgur wheat salad called tabbouleh, two kinds of eggplant salad, a delicious sweet spicy salad of chunked carrot, Turkish salad (chopped tomatoes, cucumbers and onions,) the garbanzo bean dip called hummus, potato salad, coleslaw and several falafel balls. For what it’s worth, Amir’s creamy hummus rivals those I’ve tasted anywhere. Meat-eaters can cut their teeth on delicious lamb and chicken kebabs or on shawarma, a spit-roasted combination of heavily spiced lamb and turkey, thin-sliced from a vertical broiler.

Amir’s Falafel, 11711 Ventura Blvd., Studio City. (818) 509-8641. Open daily, 10:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. Picnic for four, $16 to $25.

Near bus location at Sunkist, 14130 Riverside Drive, Sherman Oaks.

Pinot Bistro--and executive chef Octavio Becerra--have created boxed meals that will make you the envy of anyone close enough to see or smell what is inside. The attractive black-and-white designer boxes are packed with everything you’ll need for an informal picnic: napkins, utensils and highbrow essentials such as plastic wine glasses. They’ll even throw in a corkscrew, on request.

There are three menus to choose from--the Armstrong, $21, the Holiday, $24, and the Davis, $26.50. Each one has three courses intended to serve one, although the average person will find portions more than generous.

I’ve sampled two of the menus, and I pronounce both wonderful for picnicking. The Armstrong menu begins with “Feta-terranean” salad, Becerra’s imaginative take on a Greek salad. In addition to crumbled feta cheese, red onion, Roma tomatoes, Kalamata olives and sliced cucumber, usual components of the Greek salad, the chef has thrown in crispy pita chips and hearts of romaine. Mmmmm. The filling main course is garlic roasted chicken and a flavorful fingerling potato salad coated with whole-grain mustard. For dessert, there is a summer apricot and toasted almond strudel with vanilla bean sauce.

The Holiday menu is another winner. As a first course, the chef has created one of the most appealing Nicoise salads this side of the Azure Coast. Heady hunks of peppered ahi tuna are tumbled in with the greens, along with cooked egg, ripe tomato, cured anchovy and a rustic toast smeared with the olive pate called tapenade. The follow-up is a sandwich of peppered roast beef with horseradish mayonnaise on a crunchy baguette, a salad of cherry tomatoes and a dessert of fresh mixed berries. If these baskets don’t turn a few heads, Maestro John Mauceri is probably in for a long evening.

Pinot, 12969 Ventura Blvd., Studio City. (818) 990-0500. Open 11:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. daily. Picnic for two, $42 to $53. Picnic boxes available starting July 1. A few hours advance notice is requested.

Near bus location at 3700 Barham Blvd., Burbank.

Perhaps the idea of eating meaty, messy barbecue on the bowl grounds clashes with the genteel aesthetic that produced Bach and Mozart. That makes it all the more appealing to a non-traditionalist on a July evening.

Ribs USA is well set-up to provide a large or small picnic. The restaurant no longer uses hardwoods to slow-smoke meats, but the coal barbecuing method used now produces a tender, flavorful product. If you will be going with a large group, Ribs USA has six special large party menus, each designed to feed 10 to 12 people.

The No. 1 all-chicken menu, for $45.95, consists of approximately four full chickens, about fifteen squares of the restaurant’s crumbly, buttery corn bread and a choice of two sides shoveled into enormous, industrial-sized aluminum pans. The No. 3 all-baby-back menu, $76.95, comes with 4 1/2 to five full slabs, each slab with about 13 bones.

This is good, saucy barbecue, with a choice of mild, medium or hot sauces. I tried the medium and found it on the peppery side when compared with the medium-strength sauces in other Valley barbecue restaurants, a complex, delicious sauce with a subtle sweetness. Baby backs are fall-off-the-bone tender; the man-sized beef ribs tend to be the most difficult to eat. Good sides include terrific collard greens, a creamy potato salad and moist corn cobettes. The restaurant provides utensils, napkins, towelettes and good containers, but getting the red out after the meal will require a little extra effort.

Ribs USA, 2711 W. Olive Ave., Burbank. (818) 841-8872. Open Monday to Thursday, 10:30 a.m. to 10 p.m.; Friday, 10:30 a.m. to 11 p.m.; Saturday, 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.; Sunday, 3 to 8 p.m. Picnic for 10 to 12, $45.95 to $129.95.

Near bus location at Rocketdyne parking lot, corner of Nordhoff Street and De Soto Avenue.

There isn’t much in the way of food service in this largely industrial expanse of Canoga Park, so choices are a bit more limited than in the other three locations. Luckily, there’s Dragon Wok, an exotic alternative to nearby Popeye’s Chicken. Dragon Wok’s good steam-table Chinese dishes are an intelligent option to commercial fried chicken, and the restaurant’s cooked-to-order dishes are even better.

The only caveat is the packing. Dragon Wok isn’t really set up for picnickers. Like most Chinese joints, a good deal of their business is to-go, but the bubble-top Styrofoam containers and aluminum foil reinforcements they use might not do the job over the long haul to Highland Avenue. By the time I transported Dragon Wok’s food a similar distance, it was runny and lukewarm.

Bring your own containers, though, and you’ll be in for a treat. Behind the front counter are three enormous, ancient-looking rice cookers filled with some of the tastiest steamed rice this side of Monterey Park.

For $3.25, you get two items from the steam table; for $3.99, three, served atop enormous mounds of this rice. Choose from such dishes as a piquant beef with broccoli; excellent spicy sauteed chicken redolent of chili; smoky, deep brown chicken legs flavored with a dark soy sauce, or, my favorite: simple, rustic cabbage with stewed, barbecued pork.

Items cooked to order serve two to three. They won’t be as good a value as the combinations, but some of the recipes are dazzlers. Spicy kung pao san shan is a tempting combination of shrimp, beef, chicken, peanuts, green and red peppers and mouth-numbing fagara peppers, a dish that begs for a draught of ice-cold beer. Spicy beef is bits of fried beef, crisp as good beef jerky and twice as delicious. Simple sauteed broccoli is masterful, cut into manageable bite-sized chunks. Think of how cool you’ll be, if you do as seasoned veterans do and bring your own lacquer-coated chopsticks.

Dragon Wok, 9029 De Soto Ave., Canoga Park. (818) 882-0966. Open Monday to Friday, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Saturday, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Closed Sunday. Picnic for six, $16 to $28.