Jampacked Menu

It’s easy to feel you can have it all at the sleek Calabasas Commons, with its stone bridges and flowing streams. The mall’s Spanish-style architecture blends into the nearby hills as elegantly as a Frank Lloyd Wright hacienda.

The crown jewel of the mall might be Marmalade Cafe, to judge from the crowds waiting, beepers in hand, for tables. It’s the fifth in a small Southland chain of fusion cuisine restaurants. Talk about having it all--the menu lists 200 dishes from all over the globe.

Marmalade has an uncommonly handsome space. There’s a dramatic, back-lighted circular bar crowned by a pair of baroque chandeliers. The two dining areas are decorated with colonial-style pottery and portraits, and one is framed by faux-rock walls.

The cheerful waiters would have you believe that every dish on that huge menu is manna from heaven, but earthly pleasures are not so easily won. In attempting to serve everything from Asian appetizers to oak-grilled dishes to pasta, the kitchen often stumbles.

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The Asian antipasto platter, for instance, is an attractive plate of pot stickers, ahi sashimi, Asian salads and shrimp egg rolls. But there isn’t even a hint of shrimp in the shrimp egg rolls, the pot stickers are limp and bland and the ahi completely without character.

The bruschetta includes a nicely fragrant mixture of tomatoes and sweet basil. Alas, the giant slices of grilled bread served alongside it are doughy.

There are high spots, though. Both the Caesar and the Cobb salads have real muscle, and most of the sandwiches, especially the tri tip French dip and the generous turkey melt, are top-notch.

As for the pastas, the risotto with wild mushrooms (porcini, cremini and button) has a stiff texture but the mushroom flavor is intense. The Vietnamese noodle bowl is chock full of shrimp, scallops and angel-hair pasta, though it’s not as flavorful as what you’d get for a quarter the price at any Vietnamese soup joint.

The New Zealand rack of lamb and the certified Angus rib eye, both cooked on the oak grill, are excellent cuts of meat.

There’s also a slew of dinner entrees--a meaty lamb shank, an (over-seasoned) herb-crusted roast chicken and a nice Parmesan-crusted snapper, to name just a few.

Obviously, on a menu of 200 items, this is just scratching the surface. Maybe you just about can have it all at Calabasas Commons.

BE THERE

Marmalade Cafe, 4783 Commons Way, Suite E, Calabasas. Open Sunday-Thursday, 7:30 a.m.-10 p.m.; Friday-Saturday, 7:30 a.m.-11 p.m. Full bar. Parking in lot. All major cards. Dinner for two, $28-$52. Suggested dishes: classic Caesar, $4.95/$6.95; tri tip French dip, $8.95; certified Angus rib eye, $21.95; New Zealand rack of lamb, $22.95. Call (818) 225-9092.