A Worthy Successor

If you enter Napoleon through the back door, you pass deli and pastry cases full of knishes, cookies, composed salads and fancy pies. But from the Ventura Boulevard side, you find yourself in a vast beige dining room with a totally unrelated menu.

This side of Napoleon, the deli and bakery that have taken over the space of a Studio City institution named Weby’s, is a restaurant serving reasonably priced eclectic dishes a la Cafe Bizou or JoeJoe’s. It even has a wood-burning oven.

The eatery’s Napoleon garden salad is a huge, colorful platter of greens, unusually ripe Roma tomatoes, grilled portabello mushrooms, eggplants, roasted peppers, white beans and penne, all sprinkled with grated Romano and a balsamic vinaigrette. Wow! And that’s the small portion.

But the next time I have the chicken pot stickers, I plan to ask for the beer Thai barbecue sauce to be served on the side. The sauce, imaginative though it is, turns the crisp skins of the pot stickers soggy.

My favorite pizza is the one topped with basil and smoked mozzarella, and the duck sausage and spinach model has intriguing notes of coriander.

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The Absolut gnocchi sounds good--it’s tossed with garlic, peas, vodka and a rich tomato cream sauce--but the sauce turns out to be cloying and the thumbnail-size dumplings are mushy.

The lamb penne is inspired, however. The grilled lamb is mixed with beautifully cooked pasta, portabello mushrooms and an intense tomato sauce, with a poached egg for a garnish.

Among the entrees, the rotisserie chicken is roasted over oak (which makes it a nice match for any of the California Chardonnays on the wine list) and served with a crisp corn cake.

The grilled New York steak--aged Angus beef, by the way--comes with home fries and good grilled onions. The trim, tender pan-roasted lamb has a highly flavored Cabernet sauce. I do have a gripe with the crispy whitefish (served on nice, mashed red-skin potatoes): Mine was dry.

Desserts are a big drawing card. I like the chocolate souffle (the creme bru^lee is a sugar blast with all the subtlety of an elbow to the ribs).

Oddly, I didn’t see any Napoleon salads in the deli-side pastry case, but I did walk over and pick out a crusty slice of apple pie and a nice fruit Charlotte made with lady fingers, Bavarian cream and glazed fresh fruit.

Not bad at all. Weby’s, you’ve got yourself a worthy successor.

BE THERE

Napoleon, 12131 Ventura Blvd., Studio City. Restaurant open 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Sunday-Thursday; 11 a.m.-11 p.m. Friday-Saturday. Call for bakery hours. Parking in rear. Beer and wine only. All major cards. Dinner for two, $23-$38. Suggested dishes: Napoleon garden salad, $6.95-$8.95; smoked mozzarella pizza, $7.95; lamb penne, $12.95; New York steak, $15.95; chocolate souffle, $5.50. Call (818) 769-6062.