L.A.’s Taste of Bangladesh : Jafran Royal Kitchen on 3rd Street has a Muslim butcher shop, a cozy four tables and low prices. Try the fish, too.

Cool alphabet. It’s like the visual analogue of a fast-talking argument full of unexpected twists. In L.A., we get to savor all sorts of writing systems--Thai, Chinese, Armenian, even Ethiopian--but we don’t often see the jazzy, angular Bengali script. And here it is, right on the outskirts of Koreatown.

In English the sign reads “Jafran Royal Kitchen Garden of Bengal”--a name that has an unexpected twist or two itself. I’ll buy the royal kitchen part, but don’t expect vegetarian food from this particular garden. Owner Kamran Alam comes from the eastern half of Bengal, otherwise known as Bangladesh, and his is an emphatically meat-eating cuisine. About a quarter of the premises are devoted to a Muslim butcher shop.

The rest consists of a couple of shelves of imported goods, a freezer case of Bangladeshi fish, a steam table of curries, a sweets counter and four tables. In short, it’s pretty spare, but it does have some visual interest (beyond the usual TV screen showing Indian music videos): There are moody Bengali paintings on the walls.

The place is mostly patronized by jovial Bangladeshi homeboys and the occasional serious-looking Muslim religious scholar. There’s a donations box at the cash register to save a mosque in San Luis Obispo, and it goes without saying there’s no wine list. The only beverage is filtered water.

The hot food at the steam table is recognizably Indian, only with a Bengali accent: plenty of mustard and mustard oil, unfamiliar spices like nigella and brown cardamom, a strong taste for fresh-water fish. And it’s incredibly cheap. Entrees run from $1.50 all the way up to $4.50.

In place of the usual samosas, Jafran has meat pastries called by an English name, patties. These are luscious flaky pastries with a small amount of mildly spiced filling and an arresting streak of purely decorative orange color on top.

The steam table selection changes all the time, but beef curry is always available. It’s probably the best thing here, too. The meat is stewed very tender in the Bengali curry base of ground onions and ginger root. There are usually some cardamom pods and cinnamon sticks floating around in the fragrant sauce, along with unproblematic chunks of bone. Chicken curry (which often includes potatoes) has much the same sauce but it’s not as flavorful as the beef.

Usually there’s a mutton curry as well. It’s meatier than lamb, but if you find lamb too gamy, mutton will not be your meat at all. The mutton dish non-Bengalis would have least trouble with is mutton with lentils, which is moderately hot with a hint of mustard. You can often get mutton biryani, chunks of curried meat and hard-boiled eggs mixed with rice.

Bangladeshis are famously devoted to fish, so you’re liable to find a fish curry with a peppery snap of mustard oil in it. The classic fish is hilsa (in Bengali called ilish), but Alam usually offers carp instead because hilsa is tiresomely full of bones. Everything on the steam table is a la carte, by the way, so get some naan bread or basmati rice to go with whatever curry you get.

The menu lists tandoori dishes, and they aren’t throwaways for a non-Bengali clientele. Shik kebab (the name which is spelled seekh kebab at your usual Moghlai restaurant) is a couple of thin slices of spicy tandoori mutton in a rich, yogurty marinade (Jafran sells its own butterscotch-colored home-made yogurt). It comes with excellent naan bread.

There’s always at least one vegetable dish, such as a salad of mashed eggplant with onions, cilantro and whole mustard seeds. Curried mixed vegetables (potatoes, cabbage, cauliflower and carrots) have the sweet, herby flavor of the spice nigella (kalonji). I’ve had rather plain spinach with chopped garlic here and also spinach with sweet, dense little shrimp, totally unlike the usual pink-squiggle shrimp.

Bengal is famous for its sweet tooth--it was there that the famous Indian sweets rasgola and gulab jamun were invented (the latter is called goljam here). They’re all based on heavily reduced milk and Americans may find them bland.

In the mornings, however, you can get a very attractive sweet called payesh. There are a lot of milk-based puddings by that name in Bengal; this one is tapioca pudding with a couple of raisins and the Indian rice pudding flavorings, cardamom and rose water. If only you could get it at dinner. But hey, when most entrees are $2, I’m not complaining.

BE THERE

Jafran Royal Kitchen--Garden of Bengal, 4153 W. 3rd St., L.A., (213) 386-7799. Open 8 a.m.-midnight daily. No alcohol. Street and lot parking. Takeout. No credit cards. Dinner for two, food only, $8-$16.

What to Get: beef patty, mixed vegetables, beef curry, shik kebab.