O.C. Eats : O.C. on the Menu : Spain and Able : New La Granja brings underappreciated dishes, European feel to Newport.

La Granja Mediterranean Grill in Newport Beach is the newest restaurant to bring the underappreciated cuisine of Spain to Orange County, a corner of the world where dinner usually is long over before a Spaniard sits down to his.

The restaurant is named for a posh estate on the island of Majorca in the Balearic Islands. Owner Andres Gelabert is a Majorquin, a native of Majorca. Years ago, he founded Medieval Times in Buena Park. Now, he has come out of retirement to assist his son with this new venture.

They certainly have given the restaurant a Spanish feel. If you came here when this was the Indian restaurant Royal Khyber, you’ll be amazed at the transformation. Heavy wooden beams and ochre-tinted walls have magically Europeanized the dining room.

An antique Majorcan cheese press sits smack in the middle of this room. A weather-beaten grape press adds character to a large sideboard.

The room is further decorated with ceramic jugs for sangria and still-life pictures of fruit and flowers. Tables are set European style, with red cloths draped with white ones, the red ones peaking out at the table corners.

On weekends, La Granja fields a lively scene. The restaurant draws a good crowd, but come during the week and things can be eerily quiet with only the Gipsy Kings playing quietly on La Granja’s sound system.

Spanish food can be terrifically sensual. But because it isn’t a heavily seasoned cuisine, its success depends very much on the integrity of the ingredients. La Granja, which means “the farm,” has a team of chefs from different Spanish provinces working the kitchen. The head chef is Majorquin. His assistant is Basque.

Many people may prefer to start with tapas, salty tidbits designed to keep you thirsty at the bar. La Granja makes several with limited success. Tortilla Espagnola is the original tortilla, a round, puffy egg and potato dish cut into fat wedges and eaten either hot or at room temperature. This one would be better if the olive oil, a key component, had more flavor.

Similarly, pa amb oli, a name that means bread and oil in the Catalan language, doesn’t live up to its potential. The bread is meant to showcase the virtues of Serrano ham served with it, a salty raw-cured meat considered by many connoisseurs to be the world’s best ham. But the thin slices of ham I tasted had almost no flavor beyond a salty sweetness.

Some tapas, though, are fine. One of the best is alitas de pollo, deftly breaded chicken wings smeared with alliolli, a garlicky Catalan mayonnaise that is the close cousin of Provencal aioli. Croquetas de pollo, small orbs not unlike Stouffer’s chicken croquettes, are nicely crisp and meltingly soft in the center.

Gambas ajillo, prawns sauteed in garlic and olive oil, are oily and loaded with bits of scorched garlic.

Go for a pair of dishes from the menu’s antipasti section instead. One is a delicious smoked salmon cake smeared with black olive butter. The other is carpaccio de buey, peppered raw beef crowned with shaved Parmesan and a heady pesto sauce.

La Granja gives Spain’s famous chilled vegetable soup, gazpacho, an inspiring new twist. Here, a smoothly pureed take on this tomato-based soup is poured from a white ceramic pitcher into a bowl stocked with homemade croutons and toasted pine nuts. Beware, however, the gritty house salad. They need to do a better job washing the lettuce.

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Main dishes are what this kitchen does best. I like that La Granja has paella pans in various sizes, designed to accommodate an order from one person or several. Order an individual paella, and you’ll get a small metal pan filled with saffron-fragrant rice, seafood and meat. Order one for four, and the pan is enormous.

Paella Valenciana is the best choice. It comes chock-full of chicken and various seafoods, and the rice has a firm, grainy texture. Paella de pasta con bogavante, something eaten all over Catalonia also is worth a shout. For this dish, fideos, thin vermicelli noodles, stand in for the rice. Chunks of Maine lobster give added flavor.

Halibut gratinado, the menu tells us, is a Basque recipe. It’s a large piece of fresh fish on a bed of mushrooms, with a crusty brown bread crumb topping. The virtue of the recipe is that even when the chefs overcook the fish, as they did mine, it tastes reasonably good.

La Granja’s New York steak is presented on a sizzling iron grill. It’s a good-tasting, nicely marbled piece of beef, and I especially like its topping of crushed almonds and cracked black pepper.

But pollo al curry on rice was boned chicken cooked to death in a bland, overly thick yellow sauce.

The one pasta I tried, spaghetti setas y gambas (with mushrooms and shrimp) was mushy.

The wine list has several inexpensive, completely drinkable red wines from the Rioja region of Spain. You can also opt to have a jug filled with sangria, a red wine and fresh fruit cooler perhaps better suited to a hot night in Spain than to Newport Beach in autumn.

The best dessert is crema Catalana, a kissing cousin to creme bru^lee, with the same glassy sugar crust. There is also an indifferent flan, and tarta templada de chocolate, described as heavenly chocolate cake but more like a chocolate muffin.

La Granja is a handsome place, and the people who run it are sweet and welcoming. I’d love the restaurant to succeed but don’t look for things to catch fire right away.

La Granja is expensive. Tapas are $4.95 to $7.95. Paellas are $16.95 to $21.95 a person. Main dishes are $14.95 to $20.95.

BE THERE

La Granja Mediterranean Grill, 1000 N. Bristol St., Newport Beach. (949) 252-9396. Lunch 11 a.m.-2:30 p.m. Monday-Saturday; dinner 6-11:30 p.m. Monday-Saturday. Closed Sunday. All major cards.