Sticking With It

“If this place were on a back street by the Left Bank,” a friend remarked dryly as we approached the nearly empty restaurant, “it would be packed all the time.”

Well, maybe so, but the same is true of many a Ventura Boulevard restaurant. The Left Bank is a really cool place, know what I mean? Location, location, location.

I saw her point, though. Skewers serves the same sort of food as the North African restaurants and souvlaki joints that fill Paris, and especially the Left Bank, and they’re invariably wall-to-wall with starving students and wandering minstrels in training.

Here in Sherman Oaks, there isn’t quite such a cool clientele--not yet, anyway. Most Skewers customers are Generation Xers and Yers apparently drawn by the low prices and the convenient location; it’s right across the Boulevard from one of the Valley’s biggest record stores. But they’re a subdued crowd.

Skewers is a small chain with flourishing branches in West Hollywood and downtown Los Angeles, so one suspects the concept will catch on here as well. Owner Anet Escher is from Israel, and her idea of serving various charbroiled meats on wooden skewers is close to her roots.

The restaurant scarcely looks Middle Eastern inside, with its pine wood hummus bar. The most enjoyable tables are on the patio facing Ventura Boulevard, though service can be intermittent at best out there.

You can start a meal with familiar, comforting Middle Eastern appetizers. “Mediterranean dumplings,” a delicious cross between the Indian samosa and the Greek spanakopita, are filo pastry triangles filled with a soft, almost fluffy mixture of potatoes and spinach. The stuffed grape leaves have a filling of basmati rice, ground beef and pine nuts. I must say that ours, though flavorful, were rather overcooked.

In the Mediterranean dips section of the menu, you can find skillfully executed classics like baba ghannouj: (or “baba ganosh,” as it’s spelled here) and Turkish salad. The former, of course, is eggplant puree mixed with sesame paste (tahineh), garlic and lemon juice. (“Bangkok homus” is basically the usual hummus of garbanzo puree and tahineh sauce with the addition of sauteed mushrooms; the Thai connection is not exactly obvious.) Turkish salad is an Israeli favorite of stewed Roma tomatoes, bell peppers and onions, flavored with cilantro and enough cumin to revive the Ottoman Empire.

Now for those skewers. Most of them are in the familiar shish kebab style, cubes of meats alternating on the skewers with pieces of onion, tomato and green bell pepper. Two of the best are the wonderfully tender lamb kebab--a bargain at $8.95--and the nicely spiced tandoori chicken skewer (all skinless chicken breast).

There’s also a basil chicken skewer, marinated with basil and garlic, a most pleasant option. The barbecue chicken skewer, though, has an excessively sweet sauce. The tender skewered swordfish uses good-sized chunks of fresh fish.

Another possibility is Cajun shrimp, a skewer of five large shrimp marinated in a pleasant but over-cautious Cajun spice mixture. I’d like this one better if the marinade were punchier.

All skewers come with a salad of chopped cucumbers and tomatoes, a choice of a bland rice pilaf or good hand-sliced fried potatoes, and baskets of warm pita bread. The desserts, from Pastries by Edie, include a creamy cheesecake and a rich cappuccino mousse in a chocolate cup. They’re about as far as you can get from the zlabya, baklava and honey cakes of a Left Bank Tunisian eatery, but pas de probleme, dude.

BE THERE

Skewers, 14611 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks. Open 11 a.m.-11 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 11 a.m.-midnight Friday-Sunday. Dinner for two, $21-$33. Beer and wine. Street parking. All major cards. (818) 995-8888.