Short Route to Heart

If you forgot to plan ahead for Valentine’s Day, here’s an idea: Beat the crowd and take your beloved out to celebrate on Friday--a day early--at one of the San Fernando Valley’s most unusual places, Sasoon Restaurant in Tarzana.

Why a day early? Because you might take your beloved by surprise--a good thing in love and war, no? Especially if your beloved halfway expects you to forget the whole thing anyway.

Besides, Valentine’s Day comes on Saturday, and, if you’re thinking about reserving a table for you and your beloved only now, you’re too late for a lot of places.

What awaits you at Sasoon is the heady cooking of the Middle East--and although folks there don’t celebrate Valentine’s Day, they fall in love like everybody else, and they cook well enough to make it clear that all the world knows the shortest route to any beloved’s heart.

Nelly and Garbis Kalaijian hail from Turkey and lived in Syria and Lebanon before coming to the U.S. in 1981. Each is of Armenian parentage, so they know the cuisines of much of the Middle East.

“We knew each other in Beirut, and we married there,” Nelly Kalaijian says. “This is a family-style restaurant, and we know 90% of our customers by name. We know their families, how the couples started dating, when they married, how many kids they have--really, we know everything about some of our customers at every stage of life.

“And they know us. That’s why people come here.”

Among recent additions to the Sasoon menu are four salads--an Armenian bulgur wheat salad; an Armenian potato salad with green onions, parsley and lemon juice; a salad of toasted bread, lettuce or parslane, tomatoes, cucumber, lemon and garlic; and a garbanzo salad with tomatoes, green onions and lemon.

Also new are an Armenian lentil soup and side orders of Armenian garlic bread, a “Nelly’s special potato,” steamed and served with lemon and cilantro, and a vegetable melange of zucchini, carrots, potatoes and green beans.

Elsewhere on the menu:

* A whole roasted chicken served with Armenian bread and either garlic or tahini sauce;

* Rasna’na--spiced ground beef dipped in lemon juice and garlic;

* Chi Koofta--ground beef mixed with cracked bulgur wheat and spices;

* Shawerma--a beef tenderloin marinated in wine and cooked on a vertical broiler;

* And even lamb tongue cooked according to a secret recipe and served with rice pilaf.

Prices for most dishes max out at $10--not enough to set you or your beloved back a week’s wages. Sasoon Restaurant is at 18970 Ventura Blvd., (818) 708-8986.

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Elsewhere in the Valley, Valentine’s Day promises to be a busy night, and although reservations go early, here are some suggestions:

Lenetta Kidd offers a prix-fixe four-course dinner at her Moonlight supper club in Sherman Oaks, starting with an appetizer, a salad, your choice of three entrees, and, for dessert, a chocolate heart with a passion-fruit mousse, a chocolate truffle cake or a heart-shaped serving of tiramisu with a mocha creme Anglaise. The price: $46.50. Seatings are at 5:30, 8 and 10:30 p.m.

Kidd and her group, the Moonlight Swingers, perform during each seating--and if she and waiter Donald Giddings forget to sing “In the Mood,” just remind them, because they know what this song is all about.

Moonlight is at 13730 Ventura Blvd., (818) 788-2000.

Gaetano Palmeri offers a prix-fixe four-course dinner at Gaetano’s Ristorante in Calabasas. On the menu: a salad, chicken ravioli with a cream and mushroom sauce, your choice of four entrees, and a dessert of tiramisu or a chocolate mousse cake. The price: $45 a head, and ladies get Valentine’s Day roses.

Gaetano’s Ristorante is at 23536 Calabasas Road, (818) 223-9600.

Le Petit Bistro in Sherman Oaks offers a host of entrees from the regular menu, including a baked lobster tail, a filet in a port wine sauce, grilled Norwegian salmon in a champagne sauce, and a braised chicken breast in a sauce of wild mushrooms. Prices run from $12.50 to $19.95, and you and your beloved can have champagne by the glass. Le Petit Bistro is at 13360 Ventura Blvd., (818) 501-7999.

* Juan Hovey writes about the restaurant scene in the San Fernando Valley and outlying points. He may be reached at (805) 492-7909 or fax (805) 492-5139 or via e-mail at jhovey@gte.net