VALLEY LIFE : restaurant review : In Good Taste : Diwan’s satisfying cuisine spans Continental to Californian in an elegant Studio City setting.

Diwan, full of neo-Gothic furniture and Middle Eastern carpets, is one of the most elegant restaurants to open on Ventura Boulevard in a dog’s age. The back dining room features a fresco of Greco-Roman dancers (and rather large tables--you’d have to stretch to play footsie here).

The front room has a totally different character, sleek and minimalist, all gold, black and straight lines.

Owner Serge Hovsepian has similarly eclectic tastes in music and food. While you dine, you listen to Moby, Edith Piaf and the Cuban All-Stars.

The menu is firmly in the Continental category, with touches of California cuisine. Not knockout stuff, but sound and straightforward.

The mixed veggie salad is carrots, asparagus and French beans on a bed of greens, and it’s a perfectly fine one.

The warm goat cheese salad uses roasted cloves of garlic to pleasant effect. There’s a delicious chopped ahi tuna salad, the fish well-assisted by radicchio, endive and a tamari soy/sesame dressing.

The crab cake appetizer tries to earn its hefty $16.95 price tag by adding a creamy lobster sauce and a dollop of sevruga caviar, but the cakes are dry. Really, the best warm appetizer is shrimp Madregasca, your basic sauteed prawns in a mild butter sauce spiked with sun-dried tomatoes and green peppercorns.

*

The fish entrees are very reliable. Sauteed white fish is beautifully cooked, crisp on one side and moist in the middle, and it’s served with garlic mashed potatoes and an appealing beurre blanc. Grilled swordfish comes with wild rice and a mango-cucumber relish.

Diwan stuffed chicken is a classic French galantine; the bird is stuffed with forcemeat and cut into slices. It’s somewhat ponderous, but the grilled quail is faultless--superbly roasted and dressed with a subtle Port sauce. And yes, there are steaks.

The tender filet mignon comes with a broccoli gratin and a creamy wild mushroom sauce. (My New York pepper steak was tougher than I’d have liked, though.)

We repaired to Diwan’s partially enclosed patio for dessert, so my friend could smoke his cigar.

We were feeling mellow when the cherries jubilee turned out to have blackberries in place of cherries, and we were still mellow even when the chocolate souffle was undercooked and mushy.

We didn’t care. We were feeling positively elegant.

BE THERE

Diwan, 13045 Ventura Blvd., Studio City. Open for dinner Sunday-Thursday, 5:30-11 p.m.; Friday-Saturday, 5:30 p.m.-midnight; and for brunch Sunday, 10:30 a.m.-3 p.m. Valet parking. Full bar. All major cards. Dinner for two, $48-$75. Suggested dishes: ahi tuna chopped salad, $8.95; shrimp Madregasca, $13.95; sauteed white fish, $15.50; grilled quail, $18. Call (818) 501-6015.