A Chic Shack Laguna-Style

Like any good neighborhood restaurant, Cafe Zoolu reflects its community--in this case, Laguna Beach. It’s funky and eclectic, too crowded and too expensive, but always distinctive.

It doesn’t advertise or call attention to itself in the least, and hardly anyone from the other side of the San Joaquin Hills ever visits.

Here’s how Laguna it is: Though its cuisine is jazzy and sophisticated (chef William Withrow used to work at Pascal) and entrees cost as much as $30, Cafe Zoolu looks like some kind of Polynesian-motif fish taco stand, right down to the tiki-shaped salt shakers. The open kitchen is surrounded by bar seats with zebra stripes on their backs, and there are more zebra stripes on the chairs and benches.

For what it’s worth, autographed photos of k.d. lang and the Kingston Trio are prominently displayed in the unisex restroom. Owners Michael and Toni Leech, who sold the Quiet Woman in Corona del Mar and bought Cafe Zoolu seven years ago, deserve credit for keeping their restaurant comfortable and quirky.

The back wall of the dining room doubles as the wine cellar, and the wine list is a good place to start when you’re considering the menu. The Leeches have a taste for distinctive boutique California and international wines, so you’ll see hard-to-find labels such as Rabbit Ridge here. On top of that, the daily insert menu highlights a featured wine--one day it was an earthy 1996 Gabrieli Syrah ($24)--and a wide selection of wines by the glass.

Cafe Zoolu’s message is clear: Wine should be part of your meal. And you might go through a bottle of wine trying to decide what to order.

*

The eclectic menu offers appetizers ranging from buffalo mozzarella to pot stickers to ahi Nicoise salad. Pastas are available as starters and main dishes. The entrees include seafood dishes (grilled ahi, cioppino, bouillabaisse) and a vegetarian burrito (filled with vegetables and mashed potatoes), not to mention grilled pork chops and filet mignon, even good, old meatloaf.

And then there are the daily specials to digest. They tend to show Withrow fusing French and Asian elements. You might find baseball-sized cut of swordfish in a caper, lemon and butter sauce or imported European wild rabbit in Dijon mustard sauce, on the same menu as barbecued salmon steak covered in hoisin sauce and Chilean sea bass encrusted with Japanese herbs and served with Asian plum and peanut sauce. Withrow seems equally at home in all these styles of cooking, and when he comes up short, it’s from creative ambition, not lack of skill.

Not that he shanks them too often, but I would ask him to reconsider some of his appetizers. The pot stickers are bland, so the spicy ginger/lemon/soy sauce overwhelms them. The ahi and crab cakes (which appear as a daily special) just taste like heavily breaded tuna, and the roasted red pepper sauce accompanying them is weak and tomatoey--it gives the effect of canned spaghetti sauce, of all strange things.

The best appetizer, when available, is the excellent warm scallop salad, though it’s technically an entree (you can split it between two diners). It’s like a Cobb salad of chopped tomato, bacon and eggs with the addition of sunflower seeds and perfectly grilled scallops.

The menu lists the restaurant’s most popular entree as the “famous chunk” of swordfish, 3 inches in diameter and as round as the softball-style steak at Ruth’s Chris Steak House. This sphere of fish is grilled on all sides--perfectly cooked, making it a hearty, delicious entree.

But this ichthyo-orb isn’t the only seafood dish to consider. Check the daily specials--if you see salmon trout (a fish that looks like the former and has a subtle, delicate taste like the latter), try it. Withrow charbroils it and serves it on a Mediterranean eggplant salad with lime and walnut sauce. There’s no other seafood dish like it.

The same goes for the sea bass, which is encrusted with Japanese herbs and spices and pan-fried. Cloaked with a tangy Asian plum and peanut sauce, it comes on a bed of vinegar-tinged cucumbers.

The vegetarian burrito is a massive packet of squash, onions, carrots, sweet peppers and mushrooms seasoned with curry, cumin, oregano and thyme, all wrapped up in a flour tortilla. It’s tasty, though the inclusion of mashed potatoes amounts to a sort of starch overkill.

Withrow also has fun with the heavier meat dishes on his menu. The lamb chops are marinated in balsamic vinaigrette and served in a sweet-and-sour mint sauce. The lamb sirloin is pan-roasted in a mustard-seed crust.

And I couldn’t pass up the Cowboy Steak (a special one day), a half-pound bone-in rib chop that looks like something from “The Flintstones.” This cudgel of beef swam in a very subtle green peppercorn sauce. Now, a good rib eye doesn’t need any sauce, but with this steak, it works just right. A mound of horseradish mashed potatoes on the side added a fine sinus-awakening element.

It’s fun to eat at Cafe Zoolu because everyone, from Withrow to the T-shirt-clad servers, seems to be having a blast. But as dining in Orange County goes, this casual experience doesn’t come cheap. Most of the entrees start in the mid-$20 range, and the wines worth ordering are $30 and up. But if you want the definitive Laguna Beach experience, Cafe Zoolu is the place to go.

Appetizers range from $6 to $14 and entrees from $13 to $30.

BE THERE

Cafe Zoolu, 860 Glenneyre St., Laguna Beach. (949) 494-6825. Open Monday-Thursday, 5-9 p.m.; Friday-Sunday, 5-10 p.m.