STYLE / RESTAURANTS : OPEN FOR DISCUSSION

When old friends come to town, I naturally want to catch up over a meal in a place where we can hear each other without shouting--which eliminates 98% of the current crop of restaurants. This is when hotel restaurants come to the rescue. Carpeted, windows hung with heavy drapes, tables set discreetly apart, these old-fashioned rooms are among the last bastions of civilized dining.

Gardens Restaurant at the Four Seasons Hotel is a perfect example. It’s the kind of place where you can take your mother or a business associate (Hollywood players like to meet here for breakfast), anyone who considers appearances more important than the cooking. Past the hotel bar packed with young urban types sipping martinis named after Garbo, Bogart and DeMille (the latter a very dry martini and the only one to consider) is a series of clubby dining rooms with a view of the garden. Here, bucolic paintings, lavish flowers, velvet banquettes with oversized pillows in beiges and taupes make for a setting that’s soothing and comfortable. Next to us, a silver-haired couple toast their anniversary. In the corner, a table of hotel guests savors every drop of a fabled Bordeaux.

And surprise--the food at Gardens is good, too. Very few plates look as if they came from a hotel kitchen, and I mean that as a compliment. Dishes haven’t been primped and fluffed and garnished and stacked into something resembling a first-year art student’s sculpture project. The food, Mediterranean filtered through a California sensibility, is approachable and far earthier than you’d ever expect in this restaurant. And on a recent dinner visit, it all began to make perfect sense because Gardens’ chef (hired by the hotel’s new executive chef, Carrie Nahabedian) is Bruno Egea, who cooked at the Provencal-inspired La Cachette in Century City.

A salad of braised artichokes combined with Tuscan white beans, pancetta, briny capers and anchovy truly tastes like something from the Italian countryside. Other excellent starters are a lovely salad of frisee and grilled quail, with dusky forest mushrooms tucked beneath the bird, and smoked Norwegian salmon and whitefish gravlax on a potato cake that, for once, is perfectly crisp.

Menu descriptions are intelligent and sensual, and many entrees sound delicious: “violet mustard crusted rack of lamb with a salad of forest mushrooms, ratatouille and tarragon natural jus” and “oven roasted veal chop with fava beans, grilled Treviso radicchio, tomatoes and savoury.” The lamb’s coat of mustard and bread crumbs provides a piquant edge, wonderful with the sweeter stewed vegetables and mushrooms. The thick, tender veal chop, showered with bright green fava beans, diced fresh tomato and sprigs of summer savory, seems even more delicate against the pronounced bitterness of the grilled radicchio. I love the idea, too, of aged duck breast with autumn figs and pears in a restrained honey and green peppercorn sauce--though the duck breast, ordered medium rare, arrives definitely medium, not a trace of pink.

Still, everything this night goes smoothly. We instinctively choose the right dishes. Our waiter is a real pro. And we talk on and on, lulled by the relaxing ambience. When I return a couple of times later, however, I don’t come away with such a positive impression. The lobster risotto special cooked in Champagne is marred by gummy rice. A special of rabbit rolled around a stuffing of soft white bread and vegetables is served on fettuccine noodles--utterly bland. On another night, loin of rabbit is smothered in a cloying carrot sauce.

Fortunately, dessert chef Donald Wressell, who represented the United States in the World Cup of Pastry, compensates for any missteps with some real treats. His mont blanc (served during the holidays)--the traditional French dessert of chewy meringue piled with softly whipped cream, chestnut puree and rivulets of dark chocolate--is a trompe l’oeil mountain. The sampler of pear poached gently in red wine, an amaretti-pear fritter and a fabulous pear sorbet is enticing. The warm chocolate truffle cake comes with punchy banana-rum ice cream and a lacy sesame seed cookie, and there’s a very dark bittersweet chocolate tart accompanied by a burnt orange sauce and a velvety vanilla bean sorbet.

Given their captive audience of hotel guests, most hotel restaurants seem to charge as much as the traffic will bear. Gardens’ wine list, by contrast, is a relative bargain. The 1990 Cha^teau Lynch Bages is $70; at the Bel-Air, it’s $140. Maybe this is why most of the customers here are drinking wine. Among the whites is an impressive Hermitage blanc, Jaboulet’s Chevalier de Sterinberg from the great 1990 vintage.

Lunch at Gardens is an altogether different story. The bar is deserted except for a lone fellow talking into his cell phone as he nurses a martini. The dining room is underpopulated and, in the light of day, looks slightly shabby where the cornice is chipped and baseboards are scuffed. The food isn’t well-executed either.

Beef carpaccio with Italian black pepper cheese and white truffle oil is terrible: The beef, veined with white, is watery and tasteless, partly because it is served ice-cold. And truffle oil in this context is like dousing the plate with hair tonic. Even the crostini spread with black truffle puree is soggy and stale. An heirloom-tomato salad with rock-hard shaved Romano cheese suffers likewise from refrigeration. What tastes just right on this cool, blustery day is chicken noodle soup, made with a good stock laced with ribbons of egg noodle and slivers of crunchy celery.

Chilled poached salmon in dill yogurt sauce comes with a refreshing salad of cucumbers, red onions and tomato. Too bad the fish seems dried out. A special Maine lobster salad tossed with corn kernels, greens and good mayonnaise is presented on a slab of cornbread. Is it supposed to make the salad look larger? Because there’s very little lobster and it’s overcooked and mealy at that. For $24.50, I expect better.

But now I know that if anyone calls and wants to chat over lunch, I’ll change our reservation at Gardens to dinner.

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GARDENS RESTAURANT

CUISINE: California-Mediterranean. AMBIENCE: Clubby hotel dining rooms in beiges and taupes, with a large garden patio. BEST DISHES: artichoke salad, quail salad, smoked Norwegian salmon and whitefish gravlax, roasted veal chop, mustard-crusted rack of lamb, chocolate truffle cake. WINE PICKS: 1990 Jaboulet Hermitage blanc Chevalier de Sterinberg; 1990 Cha^teau Lynch Bages. FACTS: Four Seasons Hotel, 300 S. Doheny Drive, Los Angeles; (310) 274-3891. Dinner for two, food only, $70 to $110. Corkage $10. Complimentary valet parking.