American Beauty

Bruce Marder, the founder of trend-setting West Beach Cafe back in the early ‘80s, has a knack for finding great spaces and turning them into restaurants that feel like private clubs for the well-heeled, artsy Westside crowd. Every place he and wife Rebecca have opened has had plenty of buzz, that most elusive of qualities. He’s skilled at creating an inviting atmosphere that’s also relaxed and fun.

When he and his partners heard that a venerable bar on Barrington in Brentwood was up for sale, Marder moved quickly to secure it. Brentwood Restaurant and Lounge opened in October, following a quick remodeling of the single dining room. He painted the ceiling black, put black leatherette booths along the walls and populated the center of the room with white-clothed tables and armchairs that invite lingering. Drawing on his close ties to the art community, he hung the walls with intriguing pieces. One, a life-size female nude stretched out on a dark background, gives the place a jaunty, surrealistic air.

I’m convinced that Marder could open a restaurant almost anywhere and people would flock to try it. Whatever he does carries the reflected cachet of his late West Beach Cafe. Since then he’s tried his hand at a Mexican restaurant (Rebecca’s), an eclectic delicatessen (Broadway Deli), and Italian restaurant (Capo). At Brentwood, it’s back full circle to American cuisine, though this version is more grown-up than West Beach’s casual eats.

When Marder is present (he spends half his time at Capo in Santa Monica), he’ll leave the kitchen to make the rounds of the tables. As the good host, he’s also stocked the bar with a sophisticated choice of spirits, which are listed on the back of the one-page menu. At the top are the current bestsellers, including that ubiquitous green apple martini (for those who insist on drinking the evil-tasting concoction) and Rebecca’s justly famous “Cadillac” margarita, made with fresh lime juice and Herradura tequila. He also offers a compendium of premium tequilas and a nice list of single-malt scotches. The wine list is not nearly as ambitious, which may say something about the crowd’s preferences.

Marder seems to be not so much a chef’s chef as he is someone who simply likes to cook, who sees his dishes as little things he’s whipped up. His smart menu for Brentwood is all-American comfort foods such as shrimp cocktail, burgers and fries, meatloaf, steak and apple pie, all tweaked to suit a singular California sensibility.

The shrimp cocktail is made with sweet jumbo shrimp and a gently nuanced cocktail sauce. His soups of the day are delicious. One night there’s a cheerful orange puree of heirloom tomatoes adorned with dots of green pesto. It’s a perfect first course, alive with the taste of summer tomatoes--sweet and tart at the same time. Burrata--a fat ovoid of fresh mozzarella with a heart of cream--comes with sliced tomatoes and a pile of arugula leaves, completely undressed as far as I can tell. So is the salad of greens, which comes with two demure crab cakes.

The salad to order is the warm spinach salad of baby spinach leaves and pancetta (though it suffered from an overdose of dressing one night). Warm scallop salad with a lemon-soy dressing on the same occasion is dreadful. The jaundiced-looking scallops are tossed with julienned apple in a runny, extremely acidic sauce. Less successful, too, are the mini-panini, grilled triangles of bread with fillings of either eggplant or prosciutto and tomato-pesto with cheese that are placed in a grilled sandwich press to give them the ridges of a wavy potato chip.

Main courses are equally hit and miss. The kitchen does a good job with the fish of the day. I especially liked an ample cut of escolar accompanied by cabbage-wrapped zucchini. The10-ounce hamburger with pommes frites is an expert burger, delivered with the classic fixings and sandwiched in a bun that’s neither too hard nor too soft. The frites, by the way, are among the best in town.

One night, on an evening when Marder is at the restaurant, the dry-aged New York steak is charred rare and as juicy as they come, with a deep, beefy flavor. It’s not prime, but it’s flown in directly from the Midwest. Looking forward to that same steak on another evening, however, I’m disappointed. The beef isn’t nearly as good, which I chalk up to the vagaries of meat suppliers. Veal daube is not ideal either. Cloaked in gravy and draped with slivers of shiitake mushroom, the meat is tender but without much flavor. And while I enjoyed the sliced London broil in mushroom jus one night, on another, the strongly flavored jus overrides the taste of the beef, and the mashed potatoes are gluey. The meatloaf isn’t much better. And I’d avoid pasta altogether, especially the overly rich, extravagantly sauced spaghetti carbonara.

Marder definitely has the right idea about dessert, though. Consider the tall wedge of “homemade” apple pie. With a tender crust coated with sugar crystals, it makes one wonder why hardly anybody makes pies anymore. What can be more American than apple pie a la mode, when the ice cream is a ball of old-fashioned vanilla? “Dr. Bob’s” banana split, a pretty composition of banana, vanilla ice cream and a good dark fudge sauce, is well worth sampling, too. The plate of cookies, though, suffers from Continental leanings. What are those fashionable biscotti and dainty palmieres doing with those nice sugar cookies?

It’s about time L.A. chefs give American cuisine its due. What I appreciate about Brentwood is its modest ambition. Instead of offering a big, blustery menu, Marder is working on a manageable one, executing it reasonably well much of the time. He’s kept the prices moderately high as opposed to expensive, but he’ll still need a crowd for this small venue to work. That may be why he plans to make it a late-night spot. Let’s just hope there are enough night owls out there to fill the tables, or this appealing neighborhood restaurant may end up on the endangered species list.

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BRENTWOOD RESTAURANT AND LOUNGE

AMBIENCE: Clubby neighborhood restaurant and bar with leatherette booths and cutting-edge art. SERVICE: Professional and attentive. BEST DISHES: Shrimp cocktail, soups, warm spinach salad, burrata, New York steak, burger and fries, escolar, apple pie, banana split. Appetizers, $6 to $14; main courses, $12 to $29. Corkage, $15. wine PICKs: Billecart Salmon nonvintage Brut Rose Champagne; 1997 Querciabella Chianti Classico, Tuscany. FACTS: Dinner daily. Valet parking. Bruce Marder has hung intriguing artwork on the walls of his new restaurant, which specializes in such all-American food as a hamburger, top, and apple pie with vanilla ice cream. Photographs by Cami Mesa

*

Rating is based on food, service and ambience, with price taken into account in relation to quality. ****: Outstanding on every level. ***: Excellent. **: Very good. *: Good. No star: Poor to satisfactory.