GRUB IT IS--AND AIN’T

WHICH STATES, HAWAII ASIDE, WERE EVER INDEPENDENT nations? Just California and Texas. We’re a small club that thinks big, so it was inevitable that California cuisine would spur Texas to come up with its own avant-garde style of food.

The cooking of esteemed Texas chefs such as Stephen Pyles and Dean Fearing is often described by casual observers as New Southwestern, for its use of Mexican ingredients and culinary concepts in novel ways. But Texas cuisine is more than that. Texas is also a Southern state, so the Texas avant-garde also plays with biscuits and pecans and such. And the state’s very symbol is the cowboy, which is where Reata fits in. The restaurant, the 9-month-old branch of the original in Alpine, Texas, runs to the red-meat side of the nouvelle Tex-Mex spectrum.

The decor resembles the cattle baron look: lots of tan wood and wrought iron, fancy saddles posted here and there, and vivid murals based on Frederic Remington paintings cover some of the walls. The soundtrack runs from C & W to merengue music, and if you ask to take your leftovers home, they’re put in a cardboard box elaborately patterned after a tooled leather saddlebag.

There’s even a gift shop where you can buy cowboy hats, Texas tchotchkes and the cookbooks of chef Grady Spears, once a cowboy himself. The story goes that he opened the original Reata not far from Terlingua, home of a famous chili contest. Texas foodies discovered him, and he followed up with a steakhouse in Fort Worth. I’d be surprised if Spears really serves this sort of food to his fellow cowboys, at least if they’re anything like the cowboys I’ve known. They might go for the huge portions of red meat, but miniature cornmeal muffins with garlic-infused dipping oil definitely don’t fit the category of grub, delicious though they are.

Reata is on North Rodeo Drive, and it’s appropriately huge--like Texas itself. The J-shaped suite of dining areas extends halfway around the ground floor of the Rodeo Collection building. If every chair were filled, it would seat 400, but that sort of stampede is rarely likely, certainly not at dinner, when Rodeo Drive is mighty quiet. Ordinarily, you can get a private room decorated with ten-gallon hats and wagon-wheel chandeliers without any trouble.

Shortly after you sit down, a waiter brings those walnut-sized muffins. They have an appetizing, gamy aroma, which might be due to the chunks of onion in them, but makes me think of mutton. The “bread basket”--a galvanized iron bread pan--features cookie-sized sourdough flatbreads and good floury biscuits studded with pecans.

The first appetizer I order practically makes me decide never to come back, though. The tortilla soup is the worst sort of fusion food, a rich, bland chili-like sauce garnished with pieces of chicken breast and about five tortilla chips. Fortunately, the rest of the appetizers are much better.

The stacked quail enchiladas stand a couple inches high. Tortillas alternate with a filling of quail meat, cheese and nopalitos. There are two sauces: a dark-red mild chile sauce and an excellent, tangy tomatillo sauce. You have to work a little to taste the quail flavor, but all enchiladas should be this good.

An appetizer sampler platter (for two people) provides four items that also can be ordered separately. Calf fries--deep-fried calves’ testicles--are beautifully fried in a light batter. One suspects, though, that this very mild organ meat, sometimes known as prairie oysters, is mostly served for bragging rights. The platter also includes bacon-wrapped shrimp and chicken tamales that must contain pecan chunks. They’re finished off with squiggles of red sauce and sun-dried tomato sour cream.

But the best of the four samples is wild boar ribs. They’re meaty, juicy and tender, and they come with a peanut dipping sauce that makes them a sort of Lone Star satay.

On the entree list, buffalo is the wildest dish--huge ribs cut across the bone, flanken-style. The meat is so soft that it’s evident the ribs are braised a long time, and they’re like extra-big beef ribs with a faintly gamier flavor. They come with a terrific sweet-sour barbecue sauce and fried onion rings so big you could wear them as bracelets.

Steak is the specialty here, with a good portion of the meat coming from the ranch of one of the restaurant’s owners. Perhaps to appeal to the tastes of Beverly Hills diners, the beef is on the lean side. This means the tenderloin in Port wine glaze is relatively healthful, but not the most flavorful. The T-bone steak has real T-bone flavor, but somehow the kitchen doesn’t trust it on its own, because it’s topped with a cheese enchilada and comes with excellent fresh guacamole.

The best steak is the rib eye, which, unfortunately for people watching their fat intake, is not lean. In fact, the menu warns that it’s generously marbled. It’s pricey--$1.95 an ounce--but it is a magnificent steak, and the kitchen serves it simply.

There’s a tasty veal chop, served with cabernet sauce and mushrooms. Once in a while you may find venison as a special. I’ve had it topped with melted cheese (which it didn’t need), a thyme sauce that tasted like caraway (an engaging, interesting effect), slightly spicy mashed potatoes and a sliced apple garnish that was like apple pie without the crust.

Desserts include a souped-up chocolate pecan pie, very chocolatey, and sometimes there’s an extremely buttery bread pudding with bourbon sauce. The other desserts tend to be heavily styled for the cowboy theme. There are dessert “tacos” of vanilla ice cream in tuile “tortillas” and a powerful root beer float made with Cheyenne brand sarsaparilla.

If you’re too chicken to walk into a place called Reata and order a sarsaparilla, don’t worry. There’s a sophisticated wine list, including two respectable Texas vintages, Llano Estacado Merlot and Fall Creek Cascade Sauvignon Blanc. This is the new Old West.

Reata

Rodeo Collection, 421 N. Rodeo Drive,

Beverly Hills,

(310) 550-8700

cuisine: Nouvelle Tex-Mex

rating: *

*

AMBIENCE: Cowboy on a spending spree. SERVICE: Beverly Hills graciousness blending, sort of, with Texas bonhomie. BEST DISHES: Buffalo rib appetizer, stacked quail enchiladas, buffalo short ribs, rib-eye steak, T-bone steak, veal chop, dessert tacos, sarsaparilla. Appetizers, $4 to $10. Main courses, $14 to $28. Corkage, $10. WINE PICKS: 1996 Llano Estacado Merlot, Texas; 1998 Fall Creek Cascade Sauvignon Blanc, Texas; 1997 Sebastiani Cask Zinfandel, “Old Vines,” Sonoma. FACTS: Lunch and dinner Tuesday through Sunday. Valet parking.

*

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.