Seeking the heights

Outside the wall of windows, a helicopter hovers like a curious hummingbird investigating the dining room on the 32nd floor of the TransAmerica pyramid. Behind the helicopter, downtown’s skyscrapers rise against a dusty pink sunset that washes the entire city in color. I can pick out City Hall, where the Daily Planet had its offices in the old Superman films, and three blocks away, Staples Center with klieg lights raking the sky above. Game night.

The copter dips and sways, holding its place for a moment more, then does an abrupt backward dip, almost like a curtsy, before buzzing off into the night.

Just then I spy my last guest hurrying down the carpet along the miles of windows in this restaurant called Windows. How clever to arrive by helicopter, I say to her, teasing. Actually, she quips, I came by Volvo, but I flew. Our waiter catches only the last part but tells us that some high rollers do use the rooftop landing pad when they dine before the game.

At various points in its history, the food at Windows has gone from Continental cuisine to classic steakhouse to Asian fusion to just plain bad. Once again, it has not only a new managing partner, but a new chef and a new menu. And to convince people to make the trek to Olive Street, the new team is doing something novel. They’re trying to make the food the draw. It’s not there yet, but the kitchen is working up to it.

The concept this time: contemporary American steakhouse, i.e. steaks and then some, with more interesting appetizers and sides than those at your typical steakhouse. New managing partner Brad Johnson, who has been involved with several trendy restaurants and clubs around town, and owned the short-lived New England seafood house, Menemsha, in Venice, took over in January. He’s brought in Joseph Gillard, former executive chef at Nick & Stef’s downtown, as chef, and Mitch Rosen, a former director of restaurants at the Peninsula in Beverly Hills, as manager.

Though Windows does a brisk business at lunch, at night the bar has always been the draw. It’s a place to meet for a romantic drink or to talk office politics with friends after work. The dining room has drawn mostly tourists staying downtown and seemed to be always half empty. Why spring for dinner when you can enjoy the same view at considerably less expense from the bar? And it’s the view, not the quality of the food, that tempts people.

Without that wraparound view, few would be willing to make the schlep over to the TransAmerica building, past the office building’s security, up one elevator to the 30th floor, a second to the 32nd. You may grumble on the way up, but when you step out, shazam! -- there’s that delirious view.

Don’t go too early. You want to arrive just as the sun sets and turns the sky a luminous pink, fuzzing out the wrinkles and the ugliness. From this height, even the freeway is striking, an artery of red and white lights that cuts through the landscape as streams of cars part and then come together again, heading off toward the horizon. Out-of-town visitors get the big picture, but it’s fun for those of us who live here to take in this very different perspective on the city.

Inside, Windows is suitably understated and urbane, with sleek contemporary lighting and comfortable seating. The design knows its place: in the background. Every head is going to be turned toward the windows anyway.

As for the new concept, the menu reads more interestingly than most steakhouse menus. To start, the chef has gone to the trouble of making a classic lobster bisque. It’s not an easy or a short process because it involves making a stock from the lobster shells. This one has that deep lobster flavor, intense in the way that chefs coming out of Joachim Splichal’s kitchen tend to cook. Swirled with creme fraiche, it’s lovely in its way, though offered in a larger portion than anyone would want of this rich seafood soup.

Crab cake is not the usual pan-fried version, crisp on the outside. The chef’s idea, while eccentric, is delicious: A heap of fresh lump crabmeat is gently molded into a cake and baked. The crab meat is barely warmed through, retaining all its flavor and delicacy. It’s served with an interesting blistered-tomato ragout and a swatch of arugula.

Other good choices include skillet-roasted clams with apple-smoked bacon, and juices flavored with thyme, butter and white wine; and an unusual smoked chicken griddle cake that sounds like a pancake, but is more a savory brioche bread pudding with a ragout of sweet peas, wild mushrooms and pea tendrils.

*

Ups and downs

But then here comes that snore, ahi tuna tartare, a ladies’ dish if there ever was one, this generation’s chopped salad. The quality of the tuna is excellent. It’s served in minuscule portion, nicely dressed. That’s about all you can say for it. Gillard puts a chopped salad on the plate too, which is something, at least, a little different -- but still not all that compelling.

This mixture of interesting ideas and cliches shows up elsewhere on the menu too. An otherwise excellent pasta dish, for example -- beautiful fat pappardelle tossed with wild mushrooms, artichokes, fresh peas and sauteed pea shoots -- gets a mindless dose of truffle oil.

Order a straightforward Kansas City strip steak, all 16 ounces of it, and you’ll get a decent piece of prime beef with well-prepared sides: Vidalia onion rings big as bracelets, a sumptuous potato gratin made with aged cheddar, and to punch up that beef’s flavor, a little pungent Worcestershire butter. Buffalo rib-eye, even though it’s lean and juicy, doesn’t make much of an argument in favor of bison over beef in terms of flavor. A stodgy double-baked potato filled with blue cheese doesn’t help.

The Kurobuta pork chop seen all over town shows up here too, pan-roasted to a faint pink, with the same succulence that appeals to everyone tired of dried-out, flavorless pork. There’s a fine, grilled wild salmon and half an organic, free-range chicken pressed under a brick and served with collard greens.

But over three visits to the new Windows, the cooking was inconsistent. Some of the same dishes that were decent one night were much less appealing on another, sometimes too salty, overcooked or oily. My last meal was on a slow night when I suspect the chef wasn’t there because nothing came out the way I remembered it. It’s not a good sign when everyone at the table agrees the best thing was a side -- grits with apple-smoked bacon.

Some policies haven’t been thought through. It does not make a customer happy to give in and order the special bone-in filet (mignon) the waiter is raving on about, only to find out when the bill comes that the special is $59. You’d think somebody might want to mention this fact. And if it’s going to be that expensive, you’d hope it was absolutely the most delicious piece of filet to ever cross said customer’s lips. It was pretty delicious, in fact. But I’m still bristling over the $59.

And something has to be done about the desserts. Every time I ate at Windows, the waiter volunteered that they had a new pastry chef coming the next week, who never seemed to materialize. Meanwhile, they were getting sweets from a local bakery, then from a new “vendor,” an ominous word when we’re talking fine dining. The last time, a couple of so-so desserts were made in-house. And when I asked for a copy of the dessert menu when I came to write this review, the list I received bore no resemblance to what I had been offered, which shows they’re still writing the script.

The same is true for the wine list. The restaurant is selling off its inherited inventory while developing its own list, which I was sent in draft form. In other words, Windows is making the changeover piecemeal.

For now, I’m happy that the new team is making changes and the food seems more current. I don’t think anybody expects a room with a view to have fabulous food (name one that does), but at these prices the cooking should at least be more consistent, and please, let’s have some dessert.

*

Windows

Rating: * 1/2

Location: 1150 S. Olive St. (between 11th and 12th), downtown Los Angeles; (213) 746-1554.

Ambience: Sleek contemporary American restaurant on the 32nd floor of TransAmerica building with a 360-degree view of the city below. The bar, though, is sometimes more crowded than the restaurant.

Service: Ranges from the competent to the unseasoned.

Price: Appetizers, $10 to $19; pasta, $19 to $24; main courses, $22 to $59; sides, $7; desserts, $8.

Best dishes: Lobster bisque, crab cake, skillet-roasted clams, ahi tuna tartare, grilled wild salmon, brick-pressed free-range chicken, Kansas City strip steak, grits with apple-smoked bacon.

Wine list: Still under construction as they sell off an inherited inventory and build a new one. Corkage, $20. Classic cocktails are a reasonable $8.

Best table: One along the windows on the west side, overlooking Staples Center and downtown’s skyscrapers.

Special features: Bar menu served from 4 p.m. until closing Monday through Friday.

Details: Open for lunch from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Mondays through Fridays; for dinner from 5 to 10 p.m. Tuesdays through Thursdays, and from 5 to 11 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays. Full bar. Valet parking, $5 at dinner with validation; $3 at lunch.

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.