Moveable Feast : Itana Dorea preserves the taste of Bahia in her new home in Los Angeles

Itana Dorea couldn’t have put her hands together to ask for a better christening.

Last summer, she watched as an ad hoc Brazilian bateria propped up its carnival drums, its surdos and caixas, its tamborim and its repinque, and attempted to cast musical good-luck World Cup spells.

This was one of those word-of-mouth affairs. With mighty Brazil making its way to the finals, a handful of hooky-playing lawyers and sales clerks, accountants and students hunted for a place to hide out to watch the early matches.

Open just a handful of months in West Hollywood, Itana Bahia, Dorea’s cozy dining room, dreamily adorned with candomble artifacts (“the gods of the Africans”) and souvenirs from her native Bahia, offered a direct physical connection to home. It was worlds away from the usual suspect Los Angeles Brazilian-themed watering holes--mostly churrascarias, where all-you-can-eat grilled meats are served rodizio-style on skewers.

Instead, within these walls, Dorea wanted to re-create home--not merely a replica but a tribute--to Bahia’s food, music, religion, style. For her, six years in this country, the process has not been one of assimilation--identity shedding--but one of appending--acculturation. Dorea has carved out not simply a life in the U.S., but a hyphenated identity that neither diminishes the past nor ignores the elements that make up the present and future.

It’s balancing and embracing it all.

Here, North American futbol fans and homesick Bahians can sip Brazilian and American beer and wine or passion fruit juice and sup on casquinha de siri (baked crab meat), frango a passarinha (fried chicken, Bahia style) and pa~o de queijo (cheese bread) while sitting in the humid breeze stirred by a fan.

And so, by the time Brazil went down in bitter defeat, Itana Bahia’s afternoon following had bloomed from seven or so to more than 50.

At the shock of the loss, a moment of silence was observed--until the thud-thud of the biggest drums, the surdos, began. Suddenly Dorea was up on her feet. The entire contents of the box-sized cafe spilled out onto Santa Monica Boulevard, baby-stepping through a Carnival-style samba, making the loss bearable, if not joyous--epitomizing that singularly Brazilian emotion saudade--a fond memory both bitter and sweet.

This summer, Dorea is celebrating other things: a year in business, a new stage she’s built on the second-floor loft to offer dinner guests Latin-infused jazz and whispering bossa nova . . . and air-conditioning.

On a recent evening, Dorea, in black leggings and matching clingy V-neck shirt, wound gracefully through the tiny space, up and down the stairs, arms balancing plates full of house specialties, Moqueca de Peixe (fish stew), Xinxim de Galinha (chicken with lemon, sun-dried shrimps and cashew nuts, flavored with de^nde oil) to hungry Angelenos and Brazilian expats in sore need of a charm from home.

In the kitchen, Itana’s mother, Arline, and her sister Isa stood before chopping blocks and steamy stock pots and fry pans--the patter a sing-song of laughter and instruction, their hair tied in colorful wraps.

As in Bahian tradition, Dorea says, it is her family--the women, in particular--that has been the force behind her success. But at first, the idea went over with a resounding “Are you crazy?”

“I called my sister, who is a good cook. I tell her, ‘Come on. Come here!’ She said, ‘No, Ita, I think that that would be too much for us. Me, my husband, we’re not thinking about moving right now.’ So, I call my other sister. I keep calling all my family--everybody. ‘Oh, I don’t want to do that, it’s crazy!’ ” Dorea laughs.

She paid them no mind and began looking for a place. “I fell in love with the first one!” she says. “It reminded me of Pelourinho--it’s an old city in Bahia. I don’t care about the cost; I don’t care about if I don’t have a partner. I talk to the owner. We work it out. We open.”

One. Two. Three. Dorea counts out on her long fingers. Like magic.

“I’d gone to college in Brazil, I was a secretary for six years and I thought, ‘This is too boring for me!’ ” Dorea says in her husky, musical voice. “I felt like I could do more.”

Dorea, who arrived in the United States in 1993, pieced together the capital for Itana Bahia with money she’d saved while working odd jobs--baby-sitting, housekeeping--in Maryland, Washington, D.C., and Virginia, and by selling some land she had in Brazil.

“I brought Mommy to help me to open, and she stayed for one year. Then we come back to Brazil and I brought my sister--she helped me. And we are here one year, three months.”

Now Dorea’s family rotates responsibility--mother to sister, to sister, to mother--continuing the family tradition, this time by plane.

“My father had a restaurant in Brazil for almost 10 years,” she says. “My two sisters and my mother too. My grandma, she was a great cook in the south of Bahia. She was very famous. She would usually cook for all the big parties. We are always cooking, always watching.”

What she saw missing from many Brazilian restaurants, not just in L.A. but stateside in general, was a certain spirit, an incandescence. “You come not only for the food but as well the impression,” she stresses.

Not only did she assemble her family’s passed-down recipes, she brought with her history. She carefully carted traditional berimbaus, steel-stringed bow instruments with a resonating gourd, which during slavery times could be played in a particular way to alert other slaves to danger. And she hand-carried the clay pots for the richly seasoned seafood stews and the weekend feijoada (stew of meats with black beans) from Bahia wrapped in clothes and towels. “I tell my waiters, ‘You can break every glass from the United States, but be careful with the clay pots!’ ”

In the hands of mothers and sisters, Dorea’s menu reflects the cultural kaleidoscope of her homeland. “Everybody went to Brazil and left a little bit there,” she explains, “the African, the European.”

True. Bahia’s capital, Salvador, lies along a peninsula between All Saints Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. It lies on the trade routes that ran from Portugal to North and South America, and so became one of the most important ports in the Americas. Slaves sent to Brazil from Africa passed through Bahia’s slave markets. As well, farmers, fishermen and traders drifted through--buying and building their work forces, selling their wares.

Some of this history can be traced through the food--from the native’s staples of manioc (cassava meal), sweet potatoes, roots and hearts of palm to the West African use of de^nde (palm oil), malagueta (a hot chile) and coconut milk.

“In the beginning, I wasn’t sure if the people in L.A. will like the food,” Dorea says. “I did the menu and said to my mother, ‘Mommy, we will cook it, but we have to be very, very careful because it has to be very, very light, so don’t do it like you are cooking for Brazilian people.’ So we changed the style.”

But not so much that it obscures the character of the dish. “You need a little fat,” she scolds. “Here, people are crazy!”

And crazy about Itana Bahia, as it appears this night as guitarist Kleber Jorge strums Jobim sambas from his crow’s nest spot. Every table is full. English and Portuguese rise above it all. Dorea and her husband, Jack Gray, deliver steaming comfort food in this home many time zones away from their original home.

Dorea, like them, knows the highs of being here as well as the lows: Last year with El Nino, with all the rain, the water on the street rose up and up. “It looked like a river,” Dorea remembers. “The restaurant was empty.”

You learn to make the best of it. “We just turned up the music and danced.”

Fish Stew (Moqueca de Peixe)

Active Work Time: 25 minutes * Total Preparation Time: 40 minutes Easy

2 teaspoons olive oil

4 white fish filets, about 1 pound

2 tomatoes, chopped

2 green bell peppers, diced

2 red bell peppers, diced

2 white onions, chopped

1 cup chopped cilantro

Juice of 1 lemon

1 teaspoon salt

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 teaspoon de^nde oil

2 tablespoons coconut milk

1 green onion, white and green parts, minced

* Heat oil in skillet over medium heat. Add fish and cook about 2 1/2 minutes on each side. Remove from pan. Add tomatoes, green and red bell peppers, white onions, cilantro, lemon juice, salt, garlic, de^nde oil and coconut milk. Sprinkle green onion over mixture and let cook on low heat, covered, 10 minutes. Return fish to pan and cook another 5 minutes before serving.

4 servings. Each serving: 212 calories; 642 mg sodium; 54 mg cholesterol; 11 grams fat; 11 grams carbohydrates; 19 grams protein; 0.90 gram fiber.

Chicken Xinxim (Xinxim de Galinha)

Active Work Time: 15 minutes * Total Preparation Time: 40 minutes Easy

De^nde oil comes from the West African palm tree and may be purchased at Caribbean markets. Peanut oil may be substituted but it will have a different flavor.

8 boneless, skinless chicken thighs

2 teaspoons olive oil

1 tomato, seeded and chopped

1 white onion, chopped

1 bunch cilantro, chopped

1 teaspoon dende oil

2 tablespoons coconut milk

1 clove garlic, minced

Juice of 1 lemon

1 teaspoon finely chopped peanuts

* Cut chicken into 2-inch chunks and brown with oil in skillet, 6 to 8 minutes. Add tomato, onion, cilantro, de^nde oil, coconut milk, garlic and lemon juice. Sprinkle with ground peanuts. Cook over low heat 25 minutes before serving hot.

4 servings. Each serving: 256 calories; 149 mg sodium; 112 mg cholesterol; 11 grams fat; 11 grams carbohydrates; 29 grams protein; 0.77 gram fiber.