Toned down and looking up

Whenever the conversation turns to where to eat in Pasadena, the first name that comes up is usually Parkway Grill, long that city’s most successful restaurant. It’s always busy, always a full house, the place to celebrate a birthday or anniversary. Though it’s a good-looking restaurant with often terrific service, the food hasn’t always delivered. Lately, though, it’s taken a modest turn for the better.

In 1984, when brothers Bob and Gregg Smith (who later went on to found Arroyo Chop House, the Crocodile Cafes and, with Herb Alpert, the jazz supper club Vibrato) opened Parkway Grill, Spago (the original) was the talk, not only of L.A., but the nation.

It’s hard to remember how very original Spago was at the time. But its California pizzas cooked in a wood-burning oven, pastas showered with Chino Ranch vegetables, Asian-style duck and other dishes influenced menus across the country as chefs tried to come up with their own versions of Puck’s California exuberance.

At Parkway Grill, the Smith brothers translated the new California cuisine for Pasadena by using the broadest possible strokes and glossing over some of the finer details. They put in the requisite wood-burning pizza oven and the signature display kitchen. They adopted the oversized flowers arrangements too, stashing one in a vase so large it could have doubled as a hot tub. The food tended to be just as exaggerated, piling ingredient upon ingredient in preposterous combinations. I used to get dizzy just listening to a waiter intone the specials.

Chefs came and went, but for years, Parkway Grill hewed to the same over-the-top style. Recently, though, a new chef, David Tarrin, who has worked with Roy Yamaguchi at Roy’s, has been given a mandate: Update the food. And while Tarrin hasn’t exactly caused a revolution, he’s refocused the menu and is cooking in a less rococo California style.

When you walk up the steps to the entrance of the sprawling Craftsman-style bungalow that houses the restaurant and hear live jazz leaking out the door, you feel as if you’re stepping into a place that’s more urban than most in Pasadena. Inside the cavernous room, with its high wooden ceilings and mood lighting, the atmosphere is more formal than Spago’s ever was, and the scene is less eclectic (Pasadena and West Hollywood could never be mistaken for sister cities). Behind the restaurant’s parking lot is a sprawling garden that produces many of the herbs used by the kitchen, as well as edible flowers and, in season, such vegetables as tomatoes, lettuces, chard and peas. There’s even a blackberry patch.

With pizza as a starter, you can’t go wrong. The pizza of the night might be, for example, a simple round of dough lightly blanketed with Fontina cheese, portabello mushrooms, green onions and pumpkin seeds, a combination that really sings. The dough is pleasantly fluffy, like an upscale version of those Boboli pizza shells. Another time, the kitchen might feature a pizza topped with blue cheese-stuffed dates that’s delicious too.

Tarrin has added a straightforward Bibb lettuce salad that’s simply whole leaves showered with herbs from the garden. Unfortunately, in my salad the delicate lettuce is overdressed in a sharp sherry vinaigrette. That’s easily fixed: just go lighter on the vinegar and the vinaigrette.

But I don’t get the idea of the warm tiger shrimp cocktail, nor do I think the tall, plump crab cake is done any favors by the mango beurre blanc that accompanies it.

On a recent night, a golden tomato gazpacho garnished with a scoop of pineapple sorbet sounds worth trying, but it is already sold out. Instead, the kitchen sends out a pureed lentil soup with sliced shiitake and other mushrooms. Earthy yet refined, it is the best dish of the evening, which doesn’t say much for the main courses.

Some entrees are quite decent. Others are outright dull. In general, grilled items are the best bets.

The best main dish I try over the course of three meals is the mustard-grilled beef short ribs. The ribs are served off the bone, which is a disappointment, but the flavor is rich and nuanced, and I love the parsnip potatoes that come with them.

The flavor of the grilled lamb chops won’t knock your socks off, but the chops are cooked to a perfect medium rare, charred at the edges, and perfectly fine, served with a baked heirloom-tomato gratin and fingerling potatoes in a Port-rosemary reduction that’s a little heavy-handed.

You’d think a prime New York steak would be a shoo-in as best dish in the house, but when I order it, it arrives without a char, more steamed than grilled, and covered in another overly reduced sauce, this one fired with peppercorns. I wish I had thought to ask for the sauce on the side, but I never expected it to be ladled over the top of the steak, instead of pooled to the side or underneath.

Whole fried catfish would seem like a winner too, but the one we’re served is cooked to a crisp, the driest catfish I’ve ever had.

Pasta is an option as a main course too. Parkway Grill may be one of the few places in Los Angeles where angel hair pasta with fresh tomatoes and olive oil is still hanging on. It’s refreshingly direct and simple next to more elaborate pasta dishes such as periscope pasta embellished with broccolini and burata -- and chicken. And the pasta of the moment can veer into something very like the old Parkway Grill. One night’s duck confit ravioli are large, thick-walled discs sauced with foie gras and cream, with sun-dried tomatoes and mushrooms thrown in for effect. It’s just too much stuff.

The service at Parkway Grill has always been one of the restaurant’s strengths. Waiters treat you as if you’re the most important table in the room regardless of who you are, which is partly why the place has such an incredibly loyal following. But an occasional waiter can be overbearing; one insisted on telling us each of his favorite dishes and talked down to us as if we’d never been to a restaurant before.

Desserts are another weak link, mainly because they are cloyingly sweet. An individual rum raisin cheesecake is a good idea, but a heavier dose of rum is needed. Parkway Grill’s s’mores are made with homemade graham crackers and marshmallows, but any Girl Scout version trumps this one twice over. The chocolate isn’t melted, the graham cracker is tough, and the marshmallow looks like a banana slug. The best dessert is the napoleon creme brulee, shaves of crisp pastry layered with a thick custard.

Though Tarrin’s menu revisions may not be complete, Parkway Grill seems already to be turning a corner, or at least headed in a new direction. It’s hard to see exactly where the chef is going yet, but fresh light salads, soulful soups and more basic pizzas from the wood-burning oven signal a shift for the better. And that may ensure that this Pasadena institution will be around for another decade or two.

*

Parkway Grill

Rating: *

Location: 510 S. Arroyo Parkway, Pasadena; (626) 795-1001.

Ambience: Smart-looking California restaurant with display kitchen, wood-burning pizza oven and a lively bar scene.

Service: Very professional, occasionally overbearing.

Price: Dinner appetizers, $7 to $15; pizzas, $13 to $16; salads, $7 to $17; pastas, $16 to $19; grill and main courses, $19 to $31; dessert, $8.

Best dishes: Pizzas, soups, angel hair pasta, mustard-grilled beef short ribs, fire-grilled lamb chops, napoleon creme brulee.

Wine list: A long roster of well-known California labels. Corkage, $20.

Best table: One in a corner at the back.

Special features: Live jazz on most nights. An on-site organic garden.

Details: Open for lunch from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Monday through Friday, for dinner from 5:30 to 10 p.m. Monday through Thursday, from 5 to 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday and from

5 to 10 p.m. Sunday. Full bar. Complimentary valet parking.

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.