RESTAURANT REVIEW : Coffee Shop With Middle Eastern Twist

On a brisk autumn evening, a friend and I have driven cross town to a restaurant, only to find it closed. We’re both too hungry and too cranky to have a ready contingency plan. We happen to be heading east on 3rd Street and a few blocks past the Farmer’s Market, we spot Fiddler’s Bistro. It’s been there forever; it’s the restaurant attached to the Park Plaza Lodge, a very ‘60s pale pink motel.

I’ve passed Fiddler’s maybe a thousand times--who hasn’t? I noticed the recent face lift--fresh paint, a new sign, new bistro appellation. Lately though, I’d heard a few things about Fiddler’s, comments that usually went something like “I eat there all the time.”

We parked, went inside. A small crowd of men huddled in the bar. A few neighborhood folk had scattered themselves in the dining area. Holiday banners hung over the counter. We sat. A waiter brought us warm, toasted French bread and pita wedges and a small daub of roasted red pepper paste on a plate of olive oil. A very good omen.

Soon, we were hunched over plates of hot, delicious appetizers: golden, triangular spanakopita, spinach pies, filled with fluffy feta cheese and spinach, and resting in a pool of buttery egg-lemon sauce. And grape leaves stuffed with tomato-infused rice and currants, and garnished with a few spoonfuls of cucumber-yogurt relish. It was exactly the kind of savory, satisfying food that’s best when it’s chilly out and you’re feeling deprived. We couldn’t believe our luck.

Our luck held, too, through the entrees. A vegetarian burrito stuffed with asparagus, black beans, carrots and broccoli harbored a rich smokiness from melted, smoked mozzarella.

I’d ordered the Greek equivalent of a spinach omelet, a Greek scramble: eggs with feta and spinach, with a bowl of fresh fruit on the side--even the strawberries were ripe and sweet.

Our luck didn’t hold through a second visit, not entirely. The bistro affectation aside, Fiddler’s is, essentially, a coffee shop. A coffee shop with a Middle Eastern twist that has adapted itself to the neighborhood--Park La Brea and environs--with vegetarian fare, pastas, La Brea Bakery granola. Sometimes, the kitchen sends out an inspired plate of food. The rest of the time, the cooking is decent coffee-shop fare in generous portions. Some dishes are definitely better than others.

You can’t go wrong with most of the appetizers, especially the Greek food: green olives marinated in garlic, rosemary and orange peel; baba ghannouj drizzled with olive oil, framed in hot pink turnip pickles.

Sauteed spinach nested on brown rice is spiked with pine nuts and a compelling, sour spritz of pomegranate molasses: It’s a great shared appetizer or vegetarian entree.

An unexceptional Greek salad, with feta, iceberg lettuce, pale tomatoes and Kalamata olives, is delivered to the table with a green bottle full of herb-flecked Italian-style dressing: shades of Wishbone. Soups--both vegetable and red lentil with spinach--are clearly homemade and fresh, but bland.

The juicy, jumbo-sized lamb-burger, dressed with crumbled feta and pesto, packs a lot of flavor, and a chicken kabob, with onions and roasted peppers and good hummus is also tender and good. But greasy Cajun meatloaf is definitely a miss. And the grilled lamb loin with wild mushrooms and arugula comes smothered in a terrible sweet, corn starch-thickened wine sauce with big, flavorless mushroom slices--and nary a trace of the promised arugula.

During the day, it’s fun to sit outside--poolside, as it were, although the caged-in pool area with its Astroturf lawn and absence of reclining chairs looks more like an empty zoo exhibit than a sunbathing arena. Fiddler’s, like many coffee shops, comes to life at lunch. The lunch crowd talks shop--scripts and movies and Hollywood gossip--but this is a low-key, low-glamour crowd.

Still, the glinting pool, the rustle of scripts, the ex-actress in the corner and her date with his coppery-red dyed hair all make Fiddler’s a classic Los Angeles scene: a low-budget Polo Lounge. And the tuna salad sandwiches are pretty good.

* Fiddler’s Bistro, 6009 W . 3rd St . , Los Angeles, (213) 931-8167. Open seven days for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Full bar. Major credit cards accepted (except Diners). Dinner for two, food only, $20-$45.