Grown-up, with a wink

What, you might ask, is a fine arts graduate doing baking cookies in an eccentric neighborhood bistro? Or for that matter, cooking meatloaf Americana at a coffee shop? Scooter Kanfer might argue that it’s all art. Whether she’s pushing paint around the canvas or folding butter into a puff pastry, she’s expressing herself.

Kanfer, 40, has a poetic sense of food. She loves giving her dishes affectionate little names. She’s fond of improvising, basing her menus on what she finds at the farmers market. She likes to upend everyone’s idea of what a dish should be, deconstructing the elements, playing with the words and the structure.

Or, at least she did until now. At the new Naya in Pasadena, Kanfer is cooking the straight and narrow so to speak, turning out a sophisticated contemporary American menu. It’s not always consistently executed, but it’s headed in the right direction.

She still manages to slip in some whimsy, though. A rich lobster bisque that dances on the tongue is served in a tiny cup as an amuse with her own little goldfish crackers laced with black pepper. Monkey-shaped sugar cookies dangle from a palm tree over a small lake of chocolate pudding for dessert. And the petits fours include a couple of lollipops in the shape of I.M. Pei’s glass pyramid at the Louvre in Paris.

A decade ago Kanfer, who since her recent marriage goes by the name Kanfer-Cartmill, caught the eye of the L.A. food scene as pastry chef at Fred Eric’s unconventional Vida in Los Feliz. She was the muse behind that sweet tribute to Elvis called “hunka hunka burnin’ love,” which included his favorite ingredient, peanut butter, and other similarly wacky desserts.

She next appeared wrapped in an apron at the Hollywood Hills Coffee Shop (“Last Cappuccino Before the 101”), where she developed a cult following for her quirky take on all-American comfort food.

The next logical step was her own restaurant, which she opened in 2001 with a partner in a funky Craftsman-style cottage in Hollywood. Eating at the House was kind of like having dinner in somebody’s house, albeit one hung with eccentric paintings and filled with tables of strangers.

You had to love Kanfer and love her food to put up with the interminably slow service. Something wasn’t quite working and the restaurant closed in 2003.

Now she’s back, and for the first time she has a restaurant with a thoroughly professional front-of-the-house, something you rarely find in Pasadena.

The restaurant, a narrow storefront with banquettes on each side, has the look of a contemporary American bistro. The crowd’s an unlikely mix for Colorado Boulevard, where fake Italian restaurants and fast-food places are jammed with kids on dates.

Naya’s customers have a few more years on them, but they appreciate the urban vibe. Outside, teenagers posture in their hip-hop finery, moms push babies in stroller equivalents of SUVs, while shoppers race by, intent on slipping into Patagonia before the doors close.

At the back is an open kitchen, where you can see the flame of a wood-burning oven dancing. Just in front of that is a small mahogany bar where you can have a glass of Champagne or a cocktail while waiting for your friends. Polished black panels installed in grid patterns on the walls trick the eye into seeing the space as wider than it actually is. The effect is cozy and comfortable, and the light, take a note, is exceptionally flattering.

Because Naya isn’t her own restaurant and she doesn’t need to fret over finances or worry about what’s going down in the dining room, Kanfer is free to focus on what she does best, cooking. As a result, her food is more polished than I remember from the House. And as Pasadena discovers this agreeable new restaurant, the tables are turning not only on the weekend, but also on weeknights, which has got to be heartening for someone who’s done her time in the trenches.

First and foremost

Kanfer’s strongest suit is her first courses. On an initial visit, you might like to start with her “hors d’oeuvres,” a trio of what she dubs the usual suspects -- a beautifully seasoned steak tartare topped with a quail egg, a delicious little lobster cake that’s almost solid lobster, and a stuffed shiitake mushroom cap. A bite here, a bite there; it makes a very good first impression.

I’m also fond of the crispy sweetbread salad, a fistful of lacy frisee and bibb lettuce topped with a perfect poached egg and chunks of sauteed sweetbread in a lovely mustard vinaigrette. Without a sauce per se, the taste and texture of the sweetbread shines. Seared foie gras balances atop a miniature tart filled with braised green grapes in a verjuice reduction that adds the needed note of sweet and tart.

If you feel like something lighter, go with the salad of baby lettuce showered with fines herbes and buttery brioche croutons in a graceful Champagne vinaigrette. She knows not to overdress a salad. But risotto one night is so sharp with lemon and too much black pepper, it’s virtually inedible. And while tuna crusted with za’tar, a Middle Eastern spice, sounds interesting, the slivers of tuna are so buried under a chiffonade of romaine that it’s more like a salad.

“Who’s going to order the macaroni and cheese?” my Italian friend teased one night. The idea of mac and cheese in a serious restaurant amused him. But once he tasted it, he got awfully quiet. This was pasta with a capital P, macaroni, cooked al dente and cloaked in a distinctive and delicious blend of goat’s milk Cheddar, Gruyere and Fontina.

Beef lovers should consider the Cowboys & Angels. That would be naturally raised cote de boeuf served with pommes souffles, only these are long and skinny, like ethereally light French fries. I’d like a plate of these for dinner next time, please. Braised veal shank arrives with an espresso spoon stuck proudly in its marrow, the better to dig out the rich morsels. Kanfer serves it with moist dried plums, brown-butter spaetzle and, oddly, jus in which the penetrating taste of vanilla predominates. That pale green vegetable is fennel, but so young -- pencil-thin -- you’ll hardly recognize it.

The other meat dish to consider is the prime rib of pork, a thick chop accompanied by ribbons of savoy cabbage and flageolet beans with bacon and caraway. Apple cider gastrique is a great idea, and works beautifully. Duck confit with dreamy grits, slow-cooked greens, and pickled cranberries can be good too. She always puts something interesting on the plate.

I liked the grouper she served one night too, with escargots chopped into the sauce for a bit of sea-earthy synergy. But the lobster cassoulet never quite works for me, because the flavors just don’t meld the way they do when you cook pork, goose and sausage together for hours.

The kitchen still needs to work on consistency. You can have one meal where every dish sings and then come back a couple of weeks later and find some of the very same dishes fall flat. The ideas are good: It’s the execution that needs work.

Naya’s manager and sommelier, Thierry Perez, has put together a smart wine list with more than 300 choices, a third of them $50 or under. He’s also pouring two dozen wines by the glass, and five Champagnes. Everybody should be able to find something that interests, for example, a Bordeaux blanc from Chateau Lynch-Bages or a Pinot Gris from Zind-Humbrecht.

To finish off that bottle of rouge, Naya offers a short list of cheeses. In a small restaurant, that can be a good strategy: There’s less waste and every cheese should be at its peak.

At dessert, look around the restaurant. Almost every table has gone for the apples four ways, four apple desserts served on a large square platter. The best is the 24-hour apple terrine. Poached baby pear is a wonderful coda, dusted with almond butter toffee and served with a soothing pear sorbet.

Whatever you have, your waiter will be back with petits fours. Two cookie monkeys hang from a wire palm tree. At its feet is a little basket of treats -- tiny wedding cookies, blood orange Turkish delight, etc., and a couple of lollipops. The rest of the meal may be very grown-up, but when it comes to desserts, Kanfer and her pastry chef, Luis Perez, are still big kids.

*

Naya

Rating: **

Location: 49 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena; (626) 793-4712; www.nayadining.com

Ambience: Contemporary American restaurant in Old Pasadena has an urban vibe and sophisticated bistro food.

Service: Very professional.

Price: Appetizers, $8 to $15; main courses, $20 to $36; desserts, $8; chef’s tasting menu, $55 (five courses), $65 (seven courses).

Best dishes: Sweetbread salad with soft egg, macaroni and cheese, seared foie gras with green grape tart, braised veal shank with dried plums, prime rib of pork with hot cider gastrique, Cowboys & Angels, poached baby pear, petits fours.

Wine list: Well-edited selection of over 300 wines, 24 available by the glass. Corkage, $15.

Best table: Corner banquette.

Details: Open 5:30 to 10:30 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday, till 11 p.m. Friday through Sunday. Wine. Valet parking, $7.

Rating is based on food, service and ambience; price taken into account in relation to quality. ****: Outstanding on every level. ***: Excellent. **: Very good. *: Good. No star: Poor to satisfactory.