A Dream House

House. It’s a good name for a restaurant, a word as sturdy and basic as a wooden alphabet block. It stirs a nest of images: a set table, a fire in the fireplace, the smells and sounds of cooking, a family eating together--quite the opposite of today’s busy households, where everyone eats different things at different times and rushes off to jobs, school, appointments. Restaurants now stand in for that someone who’s spent all day in the kitchen and wants to feed you.

The House, whose use of the lowercase “h” in its logo evinces its simplicity, is in a sweet little two-story Arts and Crafts bungalow on Melrose Avenue, just east of Vine. It couldn’t be less Hollywood. There’s no valet. Not one heavy-breathing Corvette or Porsche out front, just a handful of parking spaces with cars parked every which way. From the outside, it looks a bit stark. But inside, Scooter Kanfer, the chef, and her partner Dana Caskey, who runs the front of the house, have transformed the three downstairs rooms into a homey restaurant.

They didn’t have a big budget, but they did have the right ideas. They’ve painted the walls a mysterious gray-green and hung them with quirky paintings from a local artist, Charles Karubian. (I love the saucy dancing girl, and that stubble-chinned cowboy shaking two bloody steaks at the sky is growing on me.) Shirred Japanese paper sconces cast a soft light, and the flowers are lovely, loose arrangements that give the room the feeling of a private house.

On a blustery late February evening, we arrive to find the fireplace lit, candles glowing on the mantelpiece and a table set next to the fire. My friends had arrived earlier, and they proceed to point out everything they’ve tried in the bread basket. They’re impressed that the pretzel comes with a crock of grainy mustard.

The House celebrates American cooking, which is harder to find at serious restaurants in Los Angeles than it should be. We’ve got Italian, French, Asian fusion and Californian galore. Kanfer won a following for her sensible American food when she was dinner chef at the Hollywood Hills Coffee Shop several years ago during a career that includes cooking at the late City restaurant and making pastries at Vida, Granita and Chinois on Main. Now she finally has a kitchen of her own, which is a good thing, because this is one chef who delights in feeding people.

Taking a page from Fred Eric at Vida, she gives some of her dishes whimsical names and pays affectionate tribute to family and friends. “Dad salad” for example, is baby red Bibb lettuce with crispy bacon, Vidalia onions, hard-cooked eggs and Maytag blue cheese dressing. There’s a ‘little picnic”--”my pop’s pate,” a silky liver terrine served with caper berries and mixed olives. Vegetarians tired of the usual grilled vegetable plate will appreciate her farmers market “pot pie.” In one manifestation, it’s a petite dark green squash, top askew, hollowed out and filled with a riot of root vegetables that’s swathed in flavorful wild mushroom and herb jus. It tastes as good as it looks. Spoon bread tart of the day arrives in a miniature cast iron skillet. The cheddar version, for example, is corn bread laced with cheese. Sometimes, though, it can be dry.

Kanfer’s cooking is deep in the comfort vein. Other cooks have rediscovered macaroni and cheese, for example, but she had the idea to make it with large shells, which mitigates the richness of the sauce, made from a mix of cheeses and bechamel. She takes a fat pork chop and stuffs it with bread and sage. Almost everything comes with wonderful greens from the farmers market, and I don’t mean salad greens. These are collard, mustard and other dark green vegetables packed with vitamins and everything good for you.

One of my favorite dishes here is pan-seared chicken served with buttermilk mashed potatoes and the pan juices. Another satisfying dish is her subtle lamb stew with fennel and egg noodles splashed with the lamb juices. She changes her menu frequently, so don’t expect to find exactly the same dishes every time. At this writing, she had just added chicken and dumplings and calf’s liver with warm bacon vinagrette.

Her plating is graceful and natural, not the primped tall food turned out by chefs more interested in showing off than giving you something you’d really like to eat. I know someone, a big nosher, who found the portions disappointingly small. To my mind, Kanfer should be sainted for not giving you too much food.

Everything on the plate is interesting. Yellow pike is served with a handmade tartar sauce. A beautiful piece of cod comes with Brussels sprouts the size of your pinkie.

The wine list is short and not as well-edited as it could be. The restaurant is young, and I suspect no one has had time to focus on it. A better wine list would certainly add to the House’s appeal.

Kanfer shows off her dessert skills with twists on old-fashioned sweets. Order cookies and milk and you’ll get a plate of assorted cookies with a dragonfly butter cookie laid across the top of the glass of milk. Try the accompanying peanut butter cup, which looks just like the real thing, except it’s made with better chocolate and peanut butter. I’m partial to her “how now brown cow,” a vanilla-scented pot de creme with a dark treasure of chocolate ganache hidden at the bottom. We have all too many trendy or corporate restaurants that are about everything but the food. In that sense, Kanfer and Caskey have an innocence in wanting to create an authentic place where friends and others come to eat, period. In settling on this modest little house, they didn’t have to go half a million dollars into debt to do it. Nothing about the House is overblown or overambitious. It seems the two have come in with exactly what they dreamed of: a place to exercise their skills.

The House Restaurant

5750 Melrose Ave.

Hollywood

(323) 462-4687

Cuisine: American

Rating: **

AMBIENCE: Charming Arts and Crafts-style house with dining rooms, fireplace and side patio. SERVICE: Warm and friendly. BEST DISHES: Macaroni and cheese, farmers market “pot pie,” pan-seared chicken, lamb stew, cookies and milk. Dinner appetizers, $6 to $9. Main courses, $16 to $28. Corkage, $10. WINE PICKS: 1999 Bodegas Telmo Rodriguez Basa white, Rueda, Spain; 1998 Domaine Alain Graillot Crozes-Hermitage Rouge; Rhone Valley. FACTS: Dinner Tuesday through Sunday. Lunch Tuesday through Friday. Lot and street parking, with valet parking on weekends.

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.