A Local Satellite of Former Soviet Cuisine

The Tasman Sea Motor Hotel sits on that funky stretch of Western Avenue where Rancho Palos Verdes descends to earth. Its restaurant, a light-filled circular room with windows a third of the way around, which must have been the most stylish coffee shop in town when it was built, flies a banner bearing the words “Tanya’s Russian Bistro” and representations of the American, Russian and Lithuanian flags.

Tanya Vaitkevicius Foad is a new arrival from Kaunas, Lithuania, and you don’t need to see the display of birchbark jugs and amber necklaces to know it; the bread basket alone is enough to tell you. Bread is still the staff of life in the Baltic countries, and Foad bakes her own. In three visits, I’ve tasted seven kinds of wonderful bread here, from thick-sliced black rye to slightly sweet egg bread. The best was a chewy dill seed rye with a crunchy crust.

Most dishes are Russian, however. The restaurant’s specialty is pelmeni, a bowl of 15 Siberian ravioli in chicken broth with a spoonful of sour cream. The pasta is al dente and has a really meaty filling. You can get it as an appetizer or an entree, and there’s also a potato-filled version.

On special, you might find sorrel soup--chicken broth with bits of chicken and hard-boiled egg, a little sour from the herb--but the best soup is the Ukrainian-style borscht, a thick, hearty bowl of cabbage with tomatoes and potatoes perfumed with fried onions. It comes with a pampushka, a walnut-sized bun served in a ceramic peasant soupspoon in some garlic butter. You’re supposed to eat your pampushka with the soup (sometimes it’s fresh, sometimes it’s toasted dry as a bone).

The menu mentions black and red caviar, but only the red kind--salty salmon eggs--has been available when I’ve inquired. It comes on toast, looking like the world’s most luridly red strawberry jam.

You might find a simple green salad coming with your entree, but if you want a real Russian salad, you should order the potato salad or the vinegret. They’re much the same--peas and onions mixed with diced potatoes in one case and diced beets in the other--except that the vinegret has a vinegar dressing and the potato salad a fresh cream dressing.

The main dishes come with rice, buckwheat kasha or roasted potatoes. They include excellent stuffed cabbage (golubtsy) with a dense filling and a light tomato sauce, and a wonderful beef stroganoff. Forget all the American stroganoffs loaded with sour cream--this one is strips of steak in a tangy, sophisticated cream sauce with a bit of tomato in it.

All this is familiar enough, but from here on the menu turns to dishes you may never have heard of. Zharkoye (misspelled “tharkoye” on the menu) is the quintessential home-style Russian stew: a soupy bowl of pork, mushrooms and potatoes. By contrast, the pork cutlet (svinaia otbivnaia) is a sort of thick-cut pork schnitzel fried quite brown; it’s flavorful but it will be too salty for some people. And “king meat” (the sense is meat fit for a king) is a thin steak baked with a topping of sauerkraut and cheese, giving a quasi-Hungarian effect.

On special, you might find tabaka, a pan-fried half-chicken. In Georgia, it would be flattened with a brick, like an Italian pollo al mattone. That doesn’t seem to be the case here, but this is the best chicken I’ve had in weeks. It’s juicy and meaty, with a bit of herb flavor and a good crisp skin.

The special closest to Foad’s heart is clearly cepelinai, a unique Lithuanian meat dumpling shaped like a zeppelin (yes, that’s where the name comes from). The dough is a chewy mixture of flour and potatoes, and your three big dumplings are topped with a lot of crumbled bacon and a spoonful of sour cream.

The desserts are plain by American standards--an unfrosted chocolate cake, a Lithuanian apple “pie” (more like an apple coffeecake), but the Tanya cake can be quite good. It’s layers of chocolate wafers alternating with cream cheese, and it gives the effect of a rather sober tiramisu.

At one time, Tanya’s was open for lunch, serving various Russian and Lithuanian pancakes. Maybe lunch will return one day. In the meantime, as the welcome mat says, Tanya’s is the home of the Siberian dumpling.

BE THERE

Tanya’s Russian Bistro, 29601 S. Western Ave., Rancho Palos Verdes. (310) 521-9621. Open 5-10 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday, closed Monday. Beer and wine. Parking lot. All major cards. Dinner for two, food only, $16-$33.

What to Get: pelmeni, borscht, potato salad, vinegret, beef stroganoff, golubtsy, cepelinai, tabaka, Tanya cake.