Favorite Ethnic Fillings Find Way Into the Fold

Somewhere between the sublime and the ridiculous lies Todo Wraps, a chain based on the concept of putting everything into tortillas. Remember the movie “Big,” where a grown man with a 10-year-old mind becomes a successful toy company executive because he understands how kids think? This may be the culinary equivalent.

Here’s the deal. A “wrap” is a flat bread such as a pita or tortilla (at Todo Wraps, often of an oddball color), or even some pizza dough, stuffed with salad, meat or just about anything else. You’ve probably seen wraps at your local KFC. We restaurant critics read about them constantly in the trades. And yet the concept still seems novel.

Todo Wraps offers them with a surprising range of ethnic fillings. Just imagine. You now have the option of Thai, Jamaican, Sichuan, Japanese or Italian burritos--warm, bulging cylinders weighing well over a pound apiece. I’m not sure I prefer to eat this way, but it can be, well, fun.

Oddly, this utterly Californian-sounding outfit is based in Seattle, and Studio City has just become home to the first Todo Wraps to open in our state. It’s located in a busy courtyard mall, hard by a Jamba Juice and cater-corner from a California Pizza Kitchen.

It’s hard to miss the place unless you’re wearing dark glasses--the plate glass front shows off an interior painted blue, green and purple. There are a few low-slung, uncomfortable tables, but who cares? Almost everybody eats outside on a noisy tile patio fronting Ventura Boulevard. The crowd is, needless to say, more Alanis Morisette than Barry Manilow.

You order from a counter where a young, enthusiastic and remarkably polite team performs its task with assembly-line efficiency. In no time flat you’ll have your wrap--or unwrap, as the case may be. Unwraps are pretty much like wraps except that the ingredients come layered in a plastic bowl, instead of stuffed into a tortilla.

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The Asian Fireworks unwrap--which is the same, ingredient-wise, as the Sichuan wrap--is probably the best thing here. Both versions are a bit like sweetish kung pao chicken: roasted ginger chicken, sesame-studded rice, sugar snap peas, red chiles, roasted peanuts and a thick brown sauce.

The unwrap is far less cumbersome than the wrap form, which is unwieldy in the extreme. But it hardly matters. In the end I found I ate wraps as well as unwraps with a knife and fork, the way my grandmother would have.

There are 12 wraps to choose from. No. 6, Nova smoked salmon, tastes like the onigiri (stuffed rice triangles) you get in any Tokyo convenience store. It’s a pale green spinach tortilla filled with rice, salmon, cucumber, tomato, cabbage and a lime-horseradish sour cream sauce.

No. 5, Caribbean (perhaps the most familiar of the group), is slow-roasted pork with fresh pineapple spears, black bean paste (“hummus,” they’re calling it), rice and a mango salsa. Take out the fruit and you’ve got a textbook carnitas burrito.

And a low-fat one at that--Todo Wraps is fat-conscious. Two of the wraps are actually 98% fat-free. No. 11, Baja burrito, is a chicken and black bean burrito, with Napa cabbage and homemade salsa, while 12, Tokyo ginger, is a fresh-tasting chicken and rice burrito, made with fragrant Thai jasmine rice, sprouts, spinach, soy sauce and wasabi.

Todo Wraps deserves credit for offering a slew of delicious, refreshing drinks, and this in the very shadows of a competitor, Jamba Juice. There are exotic lemonades such as guava pineapple and passion fruit banana, thick, refreshingly tart and distinctly grown-up; they remind me of Mexican licuados.

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But the kids aren’t neglected. There are shakes made with whole fruits, berries and low-fat ice cream. Orange Creamsicle is a blend of fresh orange, pineapple and carrot juice, and the indulgent chocolate peanut butter cup is a child’s dream.

Hmmm. I wonder whether my 10-year-old nephew should send these people a resume.

DETAILS

* WHAT: Todo Wraps.

* WHERE: 12265 Ventura Blvd., Studio City.

* WHEN: Open 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Sunday-Thursday, 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Friday and Saturday.

* HOW MUCH: Dinner for two, $12-$16. Suggested dishes: Sichuan wrap, $4.99; Tokyo ginger wrap, $4.99; Asian Fireworks unwrap, $2.99 (half portion), $5.49; guava-pineapple lemonade, $1.99-$2.99; chocolate peanut butter cup shake, $1.99-$2.99.

* FYI: No alcohol. Paid parking in structure. MasterCard and Visa accepted.

* CALL: (818) 754-1371.