Plein-air pleasures

For a movie, a bankable star can translate to a good opening weekend, and for a restaurant the right location can create buzz in the critical first weeks. But neither can necessarily guarantee crowds in the long run. Mix, a new West Hollywood restaurant, has scored a strategic location near the intersection of Crescent Heights and Santa Monica Boulevard: a low key, butter-yellow bungalow with an appealing Hamptons-in-California vibe. In this weather, everybody’s looking to eat outside and Mix is almost all patio, built around three liquidambar trees that poke their heads through the roof into the sky. The patio is enclosed, though, giving the place the allure of a cozy hideaway. Dress code: summer casual.

The moment it opened three months ago, the neighborhood leaped to embrace it. So unless you call well ahead, reservations are hard to come by. And when you show up at the designated time, the host may seem more interested in where he’s going to put the handsome duo who just bounded up the stairs behind you than in making you feel welcome. Oh, only two of you are here? He can’t possibly seat you until the rest of your party arrives.

Mix is a perfectly nice little restaurant but with bigger ambitions than the kitchen can quite meet at this point. Like actors who have just gotten two good parts in a row after a long dry spell, the staff members -- who, come to think of it, probably include a number of thespians -- seem to have let the early success go to their heads. Many of them have come down with a severe case of the hot restaurant syndrome.

Granted, there’s not a table to be had. And chef John Jackson is a personable fellow. But is it necessary to sell the food quite so extravagantly? Waiters wax so poetic about the specials, going into such detail about each and every ingredient and technique, it makes me want to just order a steak. Hold the sauce.

The menu is much more persuasive. Short and sweet, it lists some innovative and interesting dishes not seen all over town. At least not yet. On a first visit, the genuine pride and enthusiasm of the chef and staff made me want to like Mix. (I also was very hungry since we couldn’t get in until after 9.) I enjoyed that meal more than I have subsequent dinners -- either because the cooking was more understated that night or the kitchen less slammed, I don’t know.

Mix is owned by Michael Bourseau, who has worked with a handful of French chefs anybody who follows the Michelin or Gault-Millau guides would recognize. His partner and chef Jackson has worked around the country, mostly in the Pacific Northwest, and most notably as opening chef at Oritalia Restaurants in San Francisco, Portland and Vancouver, B.C.

Jackson pays attention to little details like bread. Here, you get soft rolls braided like challah and flavored with herbs. With a little sweet butter, these delicious breads keep you busy if the kitchen is backed up and food is a long time coming out. (It never happened to me, but more than one friend has had such an experience.)

Jackson also makes his own charcuterie, which only a few L.A. chefs do. I’d love to recommend his chicken galantine or foie gras au torchon, but I can’t. The galantine seemed insubstantial and lightweight, the foie gras was not much bigger than a silver dollar and oddly soft. It left me wondering if something had happened because of the heat that day.

Soups and salads are better bets. A chanterelle soup one night is bursting with flavor, a little rich perhaps, but it’s hard to stop eating this marvelous smooth puree swirled with mascarpone. Risotto with oyster mushrooms and fava beans is a perfect summer dish, light and fragrant, each grain of rice al dente and bathed in butter and cheese. I like that the chef serves a first course-size portion of risotto, but some people are put off by the small portions. First courses are hardly large enough to share.

New directions

A simple, direct salad of red and gold beets in a sherry vinaigrette never fails to please. There’s a chicory salad too, garnished with Bosc pear that’s been cut with some fancy knife work. Lined up next to a square brick of baby frisee, it looks like it doesn’t know what it’s doing there on the plate. Sometimes the presentation drives the dish, and that’s not always a good thing.

If you eat out a lot in Los Angeles, you’ll see the same first courses over and over at fashionable restaurants. Mix does not follow the crowd. Jackson will put on oddball (for L.A.) dishes like potato frittata with fines herbes. I was thrilled to see it, and so, of course, ordered it. But this isn’t the tall, potato and Parmesan-laced version you’d get in an Italian farmhouse. It’s deconstructed to a flat omelet with the potatoes strewn on top, and a powerful dose of truffle oil adds insult to injury.

In trying to make an impression, the kitchen sometimes overshoots the mark with such self-conscious dishes. But classic dishes are sure-fire successes, like duck confit, the duck crisp and seductive, served with gold coins of potatoes and crisp green beans. Another specialty is Russian wild boar flown in two or three times a week. You can’t call it local, but it’s a tender, mildly gamy piece of meat, grilled over hickory to give it a slightly smoky edge. This, I’d order again. The same for the small chicken with warm chicory and a subtle foie gras sauce.

The real showstopper is seafood cataplana, a Portuguese dish named for the copper pan, hinged like a clamshell, in which it’s cooked. Tableside, the waiter, like a magician pulling rabbits from his hat, spoons out clams, mussels, cockles, monkfish, scallops and a single big shrimp -- ta dum! The briny flavors are set off by the sweet pork flavor of slivered chorizo. But it’s a mistake I think to try to make this dish too refined, as Jackson does, by serving it with a rich buttery lobster broth.

A special, a truly delicious piece of wild striped bass, would have been better off without a bordelaise sauce dosed with more truffle essence. (Truffles are an easy sell because they sound sophisticated and extravagant. When our waiter one night gushes that they just got in truffles from Piedmont, I was leery. If you didn’t know any better, and weren’t aware of the season, you might think he meant the fabulous white truffles from Alba. But of course they had to be the much less fragrant and less interesting summer truffle, which, while adding some texture and a light perfume to a dish, won’t send anybody into ecstasies. Maybe he just forgot to mention the name of the truffle?)

All this rapture about the ingredients doesn’t serve the restaurant well, because the food can’t possibly live up to the expectations.

The wine list is interesting for such a small restaurant, but, early on, service didn’t keep pace. One night the first two wines we ordered couldn’t be found. And by the time we chose a third wine, our first courses had already arrived and we were out of step. Now when I look around the room, almost everybody is drinking wine. And not just Chardonnay and Merlot either. The sommelier is selling Viognier and Pinot Gris, Barbera and Syrah.

Beef is back

Any place that’s reasonably fashionable with a young, plugged-in crowd is selling steaks. The Atkins phenomenon has brought beef back to the table with a vengeance. Grilled flank steak, an underappreciated cut that’s big on flavor, is on the menu almost every night.

But there’s also usually prime cote du boeuf for two aged 35 days -- which is a long time in the world of aged steaks. It arrives already sliced, off the bone. The bone is the best part, so it seems odd that we have to actually request to keep the bone. And instead of serving us each just a couple of slices, the waiter divides the meat and dishes out the entire portion in a big heap, as if he needs the platter back in the kitchen right away. Accompanied by roasted fingerling potatoes drenched in that ubiquitous truffle essence, the beef is pleasant enough, but for $85 you’d expect something to knock your socks off. This didn’t even make them fall down.

Looking around the room, I note that this is a big dessert crowd. Half domes of dark Godiva chocolate are flying out the kitchen door. I do like the pain perdu, miniature French toasts with fresh mixed berries or strawberries and softly whipped cream. But pistachio cake layered with a stiff lavender mousse tastes more like a display than a dessert, even though it’s topped with almonds that are toasted “in-house.” Oh, good, I’d be leery about a restaurant that sent their almonds out to be toasted. An intensely lemony custard piled into a tuile cookie would be lovely if it were quite a bit less sweet.

Less is sometimes more, something this congenial new restaurant has yet to learn.

*

Mix

Rating: * 1/2

Location: 1114 N. Crescent Heights Blvd. (at Santa Monica Boulevard), West Hollywood; (323) 650-4649; www.mixfreely.com

Ambience: Sweet bungalow with an enclosed dining room that’s almost all patio; a diverse West Hollywood crowd

Service: Alternately chilly and overly solicitous

Price: Appetizers, $7 to $14; main courses, $18 to $29; desserts, $6 to $10

Best dishes: Risotto with oyster mushrooms and favas, baby beets with sherry vinaigrette, chicories and Bosc pear, seafood cataplana, crispy duck confit, grilled fresh wild boar tenderloin, fresh berry pain perdu

Wine list: Small but somewhat eclectic. Corkage, $15

Best table: One along the windows

Special features: A small bar menu

Details: Open for lunch 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday; dinner, from 6 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday; from 4 p.m. Sunday. Full bar. Valet parking, $5.50.

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.