Valley’s Top 10 Range From Ethnic to Elegant : Favorites include the best of Japanese, Italian, Thai and Hungarian dining as well as wild game and kosher hot dogs.

For the last three years, the Valley Edition has chosen the top 20 restaurants in the San Fernando Valley, also encompassing Glendale, Santa Clarita, Palmdale and Lancaster. This year the format has been trimmed down to a top 10.

Narrowing the list required a good deal of thought. A list this short needs to be both precise and discriminating and frankly, there wasn’t much new and exciting in ’95.

Every restaurant chosen is the best of a genre, consistent in performance and a fair market value. As usual, both the ethnic and the elegant are conspicuously present, a broad range of price categories represented.

1. Pinot Bistro

Joachim Splichal is building an empire to rival Alexander the Great. He recently opened Cafe Pinot in downtown Los Angeles and the clubby Pinot Hollywood, and is about to open Pinot at the Chronicle in Pasadena. In March, he and his wife Christine are expecting twin boys.

Pinot Bistro, Splichal’s prototype for the Pinot explosion, improved last year. Octavio Becerra, Pinot Bistro’s guiding light, is a culinary force, and his food tastes better than ever.

A recent supper was a feast of fresh sardines on an olive oil croustade, a crispy risotto cake with crab meat and a tender cut of venison smeared with foie gras, cooked in buttered parchment.

This handsomely masculine room is often jammed with a big-hitter clientele, and offers a broadly appealing menu. It’s a breeze to dine casually on bistro dishes like fresh oysters, duck confit, braised oxtail and farm-raised roast chicken, but a more sophisticated evening is also an option. Try duck liver mousse with mango chutney, tournedos of Atlantic salmon with grilled fennel and for dessert, a caramelized fruit tart. Pinot Noirs from Oregon and Santa Barbara counties highlight the eclectic wine list.

Pinot Bistro, 12969 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks. (818) 990-0500. Expensive.

*

2. Posto

Posto’s owner is the noted restaurateur Piero Selvaggio, who also owns Valentino and Primi. Posto’s maestro di cucina is Luciano Pellegrini, to my mind the most talented of Selvaggio’s Italian-born chefs.

Some describe the postmodern, earth-toned ambience as cramped, the noise level on a busy weekend evening as enervating. I find the buzz here always interesting, the designer colors soothing.

Even a restaurant of Posto’s caliber has an occasional off day. My last lunch here got off to a slow start but after that every thing was pleasing: tender braised ostrich with a cooling raspberry sauce, an intelligent dessert plate of toasted panettone, whipped cream and fruit, and finally, a perfect demitasse of espresso.

Begin with a plate of frico, addictive crisps made from pure Parmesan cheese, then have the chef prepare one or two of his flawless pastas. Homemade ravioli filled with pumpkin puree come drizzled in sage butter. Squid ink linguine with fresh Santa Barbara shrimp, when available, is as good as pasta gets.

As with any Selvaggio operation, the wine list is a bargain, full of delicious, hard-to-find wines at affordable prices.

Posto, 14928 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks. (818) 874-4400. Expensive.

*

3. Saddle Peak Lodge

Malibu Canyon is magnificent in winter--green hills, the scent of pine, a dreamlike ocean backdrop. The rustic Saddle Peak Lodge has long been one of L.A.’s most romantic spots--as long as you don’t mind being stared at by stuffed deer heads. The restaurant now has a kitchen that measures up to the setting, an unbeatable combination.

The talented Josie LaBalch cooked here during the ‘80s, did a long stint at Santa Monica’s Remi, and is back at the helm. The current menu is filled with sophisticated game dishes such as Texas black boar chops sauteed with Italian peaches, venison loin with poached pear, and breast of pheasant in a raisin and black peppercorn sauce.

The weekend brunch ($22.50) includes baskets of tasty breakfast bread and muffins, wonderful starters such as a quiche-like wild mushroom and onion pie, and terrific main courses such as Saddle Peak crab cakes, dense discs that come topped with poached eggs and golden caviar. Don’t miss the chance to order a foamy Ramos Fizz, the best one I’ve tasted south of San Francisco’s Financial District.

Saddle Peak Lodge, 419 Cold Canyon Road, Calabasas. (818) 222-3888. Expensive.

*

4. Sushi Nozawa

No Valley sushi maker can match Nozawa-san for purity of product and simplicity of presentation. The Westside’s Ginza Sushi-Ko and Matsuhisa are certainly more cultivated, but dollar for dollar, Sushi Nozawa is L.A.’s best sushi bar.

The best way to eat here is omakase, literally “chef’s choice,” a set course that only stops when you cry uncle. Nozawa-san recently plied me with buttery smooth yellowtail, fatty albacore tuna, exquisitely marbled salmon, eel hand rolls simply wrapped in nori seaweed, plus an array of creations splashed with the citrus-based sauce called ponzu. I left sated and very happy.

Nozawa-san is a grumbling perfectionist. I once saw him ask a patron to leave, simply because he ordered three eel hand rolls in a row. If you’d rather not face him at the sushi bar, take a seat away from the action, at one of this narrow restaurant’s corner tables. There you can enjoy gracious service by the chef’s wife, a woman, one suspects, possessed of almost infinite patience.

Sushi Nozawa, 11288 Ventura Blvd., Studio City. (818) 508-7017. Moderate.

*

5. Cafe Bizou

Cafe Bizou now occupies a new and larger Ventura Boulevard location, a cream and yellow French cottage with seating for approximately 115 patrons. Even on a weeknight the place is usually full by 7 o’clock.

There are solid reasons for the runaway success. Cafe Bizou is one of the few Los Angeles area restaurants providing quality cooking at affordable prices. The food mixes rustic French and sensible California aesthetics, and the integrity of the ingredients is generally unassailable.

Delicious vegetable ravioli come in a rosemary flavored broth with goat cheese and a red wine compote. The sauteed salmon and monkfish are appetizingly stylish, the former coated with sesame seeds and served on ethereally light potato pancakes, the latter roasted and served on creamy risotto with a side of fried carrots in lobster sauce.

An enlightened wine policy enables customers to bring their own bottles for a $4 corkage fee. For dessert, try the yeasty profiteroles filled with pastry cream, the best in town.

Cafe Bizou, 14016 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks. (818) 788-3536. Moderate.

*

6. Nopgow

Nopgow means jewel in Thai; an apt name for this simple, outstanding Antelope Valley cafe.

The specialty is fiery, home-style Thai cooking, and don’t expect to be pampered. Service is perfunctory at best, the vinyl booths are narrow and bumpy, and there is usually a wait at peak hours.

But that all seems beside the point once you are eating. Everything is first rate, but it is one dish, the celestial heaven beef, that I come back for. Imagine a thick, nearly symmetrical chunk of potted beef, intensely flavored with garlic and cilantro, with a crisp outside and a meltingly tender center. I’ve never seen a beef dish quite like it.

Nopgow performs other feats with beef. Fried beef with pepper garlic is a pile of crisp shreds of beef piled up with clumps of mashed fried garlic. Yum nuea is a spicy Thai beef salad with the chili and pepper kick of a Thai boxer.

No Thai restaurant in our area makes a better chicken and coconut cream soup (tom yum kai). The best noodle dish is #89, fried noodles with crab--an explosion of hot sweet flavors made with Thai rice noodles.

Food is prepared by a team of white-toqued Thai chefs, visible behind the front cash register.

Nopgow, 2551 E. Avenue S., Palmdale. (805) 538-0590. Inexpensive.

*

7. Tiberias

The modest, strictly kosher Tiberias is run by Shula Amrani, a robust looking Israeli grandmother rarely seen out of her splattered, battle-scarred apron. Her husband, Jacob, handles the dining room. It is my favorite Middle Eastern restaurant in Los Angeles.

Begin any meal here with a basket of hot pita bread and Shula’s savory pickles: briny, smoky cucumbers and sharp, beet-red turnips. Amrani’s masterly Turkish salad arrives in a dense reddish paste of tomatoes and green peppers laced with cumin and olive oil.

The bean soup with meat is a meal in itself. Every time I’ve eaten here, the table has literally groaned with food; vegetables stuffed with rice and meat, delicious pot roast, potato pancakes and always side dishes of boiled potatoes and magaddara, a rice and lentil pilaf. Brisket, stuffed chicken and schnitzel are wonderful. The goulash--braised beef in ultra-tender cubes--is astounding.

Tiberias, 18046 Ventura Blvd., Encino, (818) 343-3705. Inexpensive.

*

8. Hortobagy

If pasta and steamed vegetables head the list of nutritionally correct dishes, many traditional Hungarian dishes, cooked with lard, might be at the bottom.

But not at Hortobagy. I had some of my most memorable meals at the Southland’s best Hungarian restaurant last year, and there wasn’t a drop of pig fat in sight. Master chef Laszlo Bossanyi pulls out all the stops in this rustic locale, a narrow, homey room decorated with hand-carved wooden wainscoting and folk-style paintings.

At lunch you can have feather-light turos csusza (fettuccine with cottage cheese, sour cream and crisp bacon) or excellent chicken ravioli, blanketed with a delectable paprika cream sauce. And don’t miss halaszle bogracsban, a kettle stocked with fish, chicken, noodles, vegetables and light broth.

Excellent grilled meats head the entree list, some of which come with the addictive egg dumplings called tarhonya. Desserts like seven-layer Dobos torte, poppy seed and sour cherry strudel or the amazing chestnut puree (rich squiggles riding a wave of whipped cream) are good enough to make an iron resolve tremble.

Hortobagy, 11138 Ventura Blvd., Studio City. (818) 980-2273. Moderate.

*

9. Cinnabar

No local restaurant quite captures the ‘40s feel like Cinnabar. This Chandleresque Glendale restaurant is located on Brand Boulevard in the front section of a huge warehouse. The interior fairly glows in deep reds. The bar is an original transplant from Yee Mee Loo in Chinatown.

Proprietor Alvin Simon, who once owned Pasadena’s Cafe Jacoulet, is often seen prowling the floor in a white dinner jacket, but it is the quirky, appealing food from chef Hisashi Yoshiara that draws crowds. Yoshiara’s cooking is yet another take on L.A.’s well-developed Franco-Japanese cuisine, a la Shiro, Zenzero and Cafe Blanc.

My first choice would be the vegetarian tasting menu, a three-course dinner consisting of asparagus mousseline, a grilled shiitake mushroom salad and a comforting dish of chewy, delicate potato ravioli. For the oddball spaghetti gateau, the pasta is rolled into a firm coil and served atop a bed of cooked shrimp paste, with a rich lobster cream sauce underneath.

Yellowtail millefeuille is a fragile architectural feat, a tower of white yellowtail sashimi layered between crisp wonton skins and tuiles of black sesame.

Cinnabar, 933 S. Brand Blvd., Glendale. (818) 551-1155. Expensive.

*

10. Rubin’s Red Hots

After seven years of Valley restaurant reviews, this corner hot dog stand still offers solace after a particularly inedible meal. I’ve probably eaten here 50 times.

Owner Irv Rubin is a Chicago transplant; he loves his hometown so much that he stuck a 17-foot span of Chicago “El” on top of his business. The cramped interior is packed with head shots of Chicago celebs, dominated by the small counter where you do the ordering.

Take my advice--order the Big Red, a steamed kosher hot dog from Chicago’s Best meats. The dog comes on a poppy seed and onion bun splotched with dill pickle, red onion, relish, mustard, an abundance of celery salt and a chili pepper. It’s available plain, too. Enjoy your Big Red with an enormous basket of hand-cut French fries, deep-fried in pure peanut oil.

Rubin’s Red Hots, 15322 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks. Inexpensive.