Good tastes, good timing

I do like to share, but when it comes to the kaki fry at Beacon, a new Culver City restaurant, I’d just as soon keep all three oysters to myself. Fried crisp and just barely warmed through at the shivery center, they come with lettuce to wrap them in with a dab of yuzu-drenched tartar. The combination of hot, cold, briny oyster and fragrant citrus is a thing of beauty.

The flavors are clean and pure, the execution dead on. But then everything on the menu at this Cal-Asian cafe shows the same scrupulous attention to detail. It’s no mystery once you know the chef is Kazuto Matsusaka, longtime head chef at Chinois. He and his wife, Vicki Fan, have turned an industrial space in the Helms Bakery complex into an urban cafe that manages to be both sleek and warm.

And it arrives just in time. In the L.A. area we have no shortage of high-end restaurants, and we enjoy what’s probably the biggest and most diverse collection of ethnic restaurants anywhere in the country. But when you want something in between, a casual place with indecently good food at moderate prices, dozens of likely candidates don’t exactly leap to mind. So the opening of this terrific, reasonably priced restaurant -- not from some up-and-coming young chef as you might expect, but from a mature one with stellar credentials -- feels like a blessing.

Back home in L.A.

Matsusaka cooked at the legendary Ma Maison with Wolfgang Puck, and at Spago, and when Puck launched Chinois, Matsusaka headed the kitchen for nine years. In 1993, he left to star at Zenzero in Santa Monica. A couple of years later, he packed his bags for Paris and the white hot Buddha Bar, where he and Fan, who is also a chef (and who manages Beacon), gave the City of Light its first taste of fresh, light fusion cuisine.

The Buddha-Bar’s spinoff, Barfly, lured him back to Southern California in 1997 to open a branch here, but Matsusaka and that trendy Sunset Strip restaurant and bar never seemed a good fit.

Then he seemed to vanish. I’d hear of sightings at the farmers market or of dinners he’d catered for film companies and private events.

At 53, he’s done haute. He’s done trendy. He has been around too long not to realize that L.A. has too much competition for too few diners at the high end. And attempting to reel in the trend seekers is a brief and mostly futile proposition (they all want to be at the same place at the same time and then swim off like lemmings for the next alluring shore).

So he and Fan have done something very smart. They’ve chosen a spot where they’ll be appreciated: Culver City. And a California-Asian cafe menu that people might want to eat every day. Prices are truly a bargain considering the quality of the ingredients and the cooking, with most of the small plates, soups and noodles on Beacon’s menu coming in under $10. There are more substantial dishes too, but these are all under $20.

Bamboo planks cover the floors and giant lights shaped like box kites fly from the lofty ceiling. A single long wooden bench runs along one wall, like a Modernist banquette. The pedestal tables are dark wood, and bare. There’s a flat screen television in the bar area, and a window onto the kitchen where you can see Matsusaka (he’s the one in the plain black cap) and his cooks at work.

The menu is what I’d call a modified small-plates concept, with lots of dishes ideal for sharing. I like to start with one or more of his sushi rolls. Beacon doesn’t offer a full sushi menu, just a few well chosen sashimi items and a handful of maki rolls. The Beacon roll features salmon topped with a cube of ponzu gelee. There’s also a delicious ume cucumber roll with pickled burdock and sour pickled plum tucked at its heart. It’s a great combination with the pearly grains of rice.

Ahi tuna pizza is interesting too: slabs of high-quality raw tuna on a pale round of pizza crust with a slip of wasabi mayonnaise underneath. The crust is more cracker than bread, which works well against the satiny tuna. Matsusaka gives a nod to new-style sashimi with a seductive whitefish usuzukuri, raw whitefish drizzled with warm ginger oil garnished with scallions and baby arugula leaves.

Every dish has an elegant little twist. Green bean salad is showered with julienned smoked tofu and the dressing is sesame oil cut with Banyuls vinegar made from the famous sweet wine from the town of the same name in the Catalan part of France. Those wonderful little shishito peppers are slightly charred, just until their flesh begins to crumple, and served under a blizzard of bonito shavings so fine they’re like snowflakes that melt into salt on your tongue.

Even avocado salad is something special, the creamiest, perfectly ripe avocado, sliced and scattered with Japanese scallions, cilantro leaves and sesame seeds.

But Matsusaka also makes his own version of Chinois’ famous Chinese chicken salad, curiously, to me, one of the least interesting items on the menu. I’d much rather have the salad of green-tea soba noodles with grilled shrimp and ribbons of vegetables.

If you long for more substantial noodle dishes, he’s got them too. The choices include wide sauteed rice noodles with slivers of braised pork belly and greens and a quite respectable version of chicken pad Thai, which, for once, is not too sweet, with the flavors of lime singing through.

The waiters strike the perfect note of friendliness and enthusiasm without going over the top. They’re well-versed in the menu and the smart little wine list.

Somebody has really thought about which wines go with this kind of food, so you can find Spanish cava (sparkling wine) along with Albarino, Australian Pinot Gris, Austrian Gruner Veltliner and Napa Valley Viognier. The Rosato from Stolpman Vineyards in Santa Ynez is versatile enough to drink all through the meal. And if you fancy sake, Beacon offers 10 chilled ones by the bottle or the glass and one hot sake, by the carafe.

Take time to savor

It’s a good idea to order your meal in flights, or you’ll be hard pressed to find room for everything on the table. The food sometimes comes out almost too quickly, especially for anybody who likes to sit back between courses and chat. Because of all the hard surfaces in the restaurant’s design, the noise level at peak times can be high. Fortunately, there’s a nonsmoking patio in back, as well as a smaller patio out front from which you can watch the comings and goings at the Jazz Bakery.

Matsusaka has larger plates too, but these are fun to share as well if, like my friends and I, you like to sample everything. His black cod basted in miso, a sushi restaurant standard, is phenomenally rich, one of the better versions around, each bite cloaked in flavor. Grilled jidori chicken is a big hit too, served with a green papaya salad. And for red meat eaters, he has a beefy grilled hanger steak, delicious with Chinese long beans in sesame sauce. Vegetarians aren’t left out either, with a vegetable nabe, a casserole of mushrooms, cabbage, squash and more in a finely tuned broth.

If you get to dessert, don’t miss the lit-chi ice, which tastes exactly like the fruit, a lovely and refreshing coda to a meal at Beacon. Green tea tempers the cheesecake’s sweetness and gives it a grassy color, which is set off by white chocolate shaved almost as fine as bonito flakes over the top. Kids will love the Rice Krispies sundae, three balls of ice cream scribbled with caramel and chocolate and decorated with squares of Rice Krispies bars.

Beacon has been a success from the start, attracting one of the more diverse crowds around, jazz buffs and movie people, winemakers, neighborhood denizens and teenagers scarfing down a bite before a movie. And Beacon may be the start of a dining revolution: great food at modest prices.

Times are changing, and isn’t it interesting that it’s not the young chefs who are getting it, but someone as seasoned as Matsusaka.

*

Beacon

Rating: ** 1/2

Location: Helms Bakery complex, 3280 Helms Ave., Culver City; (310) 838-7500; www.beacon-la.com.

Ambience: Asian minimalist with bamboo floors and soaring ceilings. A lively cafe with delicious, moderately priced food with Japanese, Chinese and Thai roots.

Service: Friendly and informed.

Price: Small plates, soups, salads and noodles, $3 to $10; large plates, $13 to $18; desserts, $6 to $6.75.

Best dishes: Green bean and smoked tofu salad, kaki (oyster) fry, avocado salad, green-tea soba noodle salad, kakuni udon, black cod, wild salmon, grilled hanger steak, Beacon roll, litchi ice, coconut rice and mango brulee.

Wine list: Smart little list of wines that go with Asian food. Corkage, $12.

Best table: The back corner.

Special features: Nonsmoking outdoor patio.

Details: Open for lunch 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays; dinner, 5 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. Tuesdays and Wednesdays; 5 to 10:30 p.m. Thursday through Saturdays; 5 to 9:30 p.m. Sundays. Beer and wine. Free parking in Helms complex lot.

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.