Simple but With Sizzle

A few months ago, with little audible fanfare, the popular Glendale restaurant Noodles became J.W.’s Downtown Grille. A bright yellow banner proclaiming the new name now hangs from the front of the building, covering the old sign.

So what’s in a name? Not so much. Noodles devotees may sleep easy; apart from a menu focusing more on grilled items than on pastas, little has changed.

The decor is postmodern casual. Twisted metal sculpture contrasts sharply with the handsome brick walls. The ceiling is a deconstructionist’s fantasy, a labyrinth of exposed ducts. The tables are covered in butcher paper and decorated with votive candles. Diva lights hang from the four corners of the dining room, doing their part to keep the restaurant from being conceptually challenged.

J.W.’s Downtown Grille is moderately priced, meaning that the menu offers good bang for the buck. Soup or salad is $1 extra with any entree or pasta, a good deal. Dishes are prepared in a snazzy open kitchen, and many of the best ones are finished in the restaurant’s showpiece wood-fired brick oven.

Some of the simpler appetizers are delicious.

Grilled artichoke is flavored with mesquite and topped with a surprisingly good roasted red-pepper aioli. The Cajun crab cakes are lightly seasoned discs of lump crab meat, sitting pretty in a pool of tangy Louisiana-style remoulade sauce.

But overkill is one of the concepts this kitchen needs to lose. The four-cheese pizza, crispy ravioli and pecan chicken Caesar salad would all be much better with less.

The pizzas here have deliciously springy crusts, but the four-cheese topping--fontina, mozzarella, Gruyere and smoked Gouda--is unpleasantly gooey.

You’d do better ordering less complicated pizzas, such as the tomato and basil pizza, made with Fontina, mozzarella and shallots. And ask for it easy-on-the-cheese when you do.

The crispy ravioli are palm-size flying saucers with a rich lobster filling, fried until not just crisp but dried out and weighed down by heaps of spicy marinara sauce.

The pecan chicken Caesar salad is essentially a chicken Caesar--romaine tossed in a creamy dressing with shaved Romano cheese, garlic croutons and strips of crusty fried chicken--but the pecan topping is a mistake. You dress up a salad with candied pecans; raw pecans don’t make any sense.

If you like the taste of mesquite (and who doesn’t?), most grilled items are bound to please. A few of them--most notably, the sesame-crusted salmon--are finished in the brick oven, which tends to dry them out.

The oddly named oven-roasted airline chicken is terrific, though. It’s a chicken breast rolled in bread crumbs, butter, balsamic vinegar and orange juice, making a flavorful (and greaseless) crust that seals in the meat juices very well.

The mesquite-grilled pork loin is as tender and flavorful a pork dish as you’ll find anywhere in the city at this price. The sesame-crusted salmon is a nice chunk of Alaska king salmon, which I liked a little less than the others because the surface seemed a little too dry.

There are fine Sonoma lamb chops, three meaty ones daubed with demiglace and served with honey-glazed shallots, roasted red potatoes and sauteed vegetables.

Meanwhile, I hear you wonder, where have all the noodles gone? Well, there are still a few--penne with sun-dried tomatoes; asparagus, mushroom and artichoke fettuccine; a rich linguine Bolognese (the sauce made with ground sausage instead of the conventional veal ragu); and the obligatory blackened chicken on angel hair--a mushy dish of sauteed mushrooms, garlic cream wine sauce, overcooked noodles and spice-rubbed strips of white meat chicken.

When you arrive, you are plied with a basket of doughy breads--focaccia, olive bread and butter-brushed dinner rolls. Toward the end of a meal here, the waiter will bring a gaudy tray of pastries from the Pasadena Baking Co., and they are not bad at all. Best are the custard-filled pistachio strawberry tart and a creamy three-layered cappuccino mousse.

Even better than either of those is, no kidding, a dessert brewski--Dixie white chocolate mousse beer.

Noodles is dead. Long live, er, J.W.’s Downtown Grille.

BE THERE

J.W.’s Downtown Grille, 215 N. Central Ave., Glendale. Lunch and dinner 11 a.m.-10:30 p.m. daily. Dinner for two, $25-$40. Suggested dishes: grilled artichoke, $5.95; Bolognese linguine, $7.95; oven-roasted airline chicken, $10.95; mesquite grilled pork loin, $11.95; Dixie white chocolate beer, $3. Full bar. Complimentary valet parking in rear. American Express, MasterCard and Visa. (818) 500-8783.