Find it once, and you’ll go back

I get a kick every time I drive out-of-town friends to dinner at some terrific little find in an anonymous strip mall. Whether it’s a polished French bistro, a handmade udon joint or a Lebanese restaurant with killer meze, the wonderful restaurant in a nondescript locale is one of the happy surprises offered up by this sprawling city, like finding the prize in a box of Cracker Jack. As ugly as they can be, strip malls are a godsend for fledgling restaurateurs who are somehow lacking the half-million dollars it takes to open the typical restaurant now. Even the highflying Ginza Sushiko, once the most expensive restaurant in Los Angeles and since decamped to acclaim in Manhattan, started out in a mid-Wilshire strip mall.

Entrepreneurs Brian Frith-Smith and Jeffrey Stuppler and chef James Richardson were in search of a small storefront for a soup and sandwich cafe when they came across a strip-mall space on Santa Monica Boulevard in West Los Angeles that was too good to pass up, one that could work as a real restaurant. They hatched a concept -- an American bistro with quality comfort food at moderate prices -- and signed the lease.

Smart. Aside from ethnic restaurants, there’s a dearth of places to eat at the $25 level, especially on the Westside.

Open just six months, Nook Bistro neatly fills that niche with a menu that offers small and large plates, hearty soups, fresh, perky salads and a number of fine sides. Not to mention homey, old-fashioned desserts.

The place is very easy to like. The food is unfussy and direct -- real food for real people. In this case the people are a diverse crowd of condo dwellers from the neighborhood, UCLA professors and students, assorted hipsters, and couples young and old. One evening, two moms who’ve escaped the kids for a night delve into a peanut butter bread pudding. You’d think they’d be looking to get away from peanut butter, but no, they’re devouring every bite, giggling.

The name is certainly apt. Tucked away off a corridor at the bend in the L-shaped strip-mall structure, Nook is almost impossible to see from the street. Look for a sandwich board set out on the sidewalk between a pizza joint and a Chinese takeout.

Nook might be as small and cozy as its name suggests, but it’s stylish, not quaint. The owners have used brilliant sleight of hand to turn a former Persian restaurant into a contemporary loft-like space. The high ceilings and exposed ducts are part of the trick, but the room also demonstrates a smart, pared-down sensibility.

Diners perch on a long, orange banquette along the wall like so many birds on a wire. There’s a single larger table tucked into an alcove, and in the center of the room, a tall communal table that seats six or eight. The feeling is casual. Instead of tablecloths, cool and contemporary Chilewich placemats dot the bare tabletops. The lighting is good, the noise level not impossible.

Nook is a very hands-on kind of place. Frith-Smith is out front every night and Richardson in the kitchen, though he’ll emerge from time to time to say hello to a friend or check on what’s going on in the dining room.

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From nuts to soup

As if to announce the theme -- American bistro -- a small bowl of boiled peanuts arrives, as a snack, as soon as you sit down. “We call them American edamame,” the waiter says. I’m intrigued. Boiled in the shell, they taste like soft starchy beans. My friend Bill, a biologist, reminds me that the peanut is really a legume, not a nut. I’m not dying to have them every night, but they’re fun.

Nook is the kind of place where you might want to start -- or be satisfied with -- a bowl of soup. A hearty lentil soup is a staple on the menu. Garnished with feta cheese and a lemon mint relish, it’s thick and delicious, a welcome change from the usual vegetable purees offered without any particular conviction around town. These guys are committed enough to the idea of soup to offer a different one every day. A chicken barley one night is cannily comforting.

The house salad isn’t just some halfhearted collection of commercial greens either. Indeed, the Nook dinner salad consists of baby greens and scarlet-veined beet greens tossed in a rosemary vinaigrette stained a deep magenta with beet juice. An embellishment of dried cranberries, brandied pecans and goat cheese takes it beyond the ordinary. An unconventional “Caesar” dressed in a whole-grain mustard vinaigrette is pretty good too. Lentils appear again: a curried lentil and spinach salad crowned with pink pickled onions.

The minute asparagus season hit, the chef added a lovely spring appetizer to the menu. He takes a bundle of asparagus, wraps it in pancetta, crisps it in the oven and serves it with a soft poached egg and nutty aged manchego cheese shaved over. Cut into the egg with your fork and the yolk runs out to make a sauce. The one thing I could do without on the plate is the truffle aioli, the truffle being white truffle oil.

Several appetizers are ideal for sharing. I’m thinking of the crispy calamari with a beautiful green wasabi dipping sauce potent enough to fire up the sinuses. Occasionally, though, the calamari could be crunchier. It’s hard to see the point of pale, floury squid. The big winner is a bowl of beautiful green-lipped New Zealand mussels. Plump and glossy, they’re steamed in the shell and presented in a spicy saffron and garlic broth dotted with linguica sausage and oven-dried tomatoes. Whether whoever ordered the dish intended to share or not, not one person at the table could resist dipping their bread in that delicious broth.

Dishes listed at dinner under the category “big” really are, making Nook Bistro more of a bargain than it already seems. Examples of prices: $10 for the sterling Nook burger with Gru- yere and red wine braised onions (it includes fries and a pickle), $18 for the giant herb-roasted pork chop with fingerling potatoes and an arugula salad.

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Well-rounded menu

The cooking is very decent across the board. Grilled flatiron steak is tasty and nicely cooked, and the fries that come with it are showered with parsley and garlic.

The once-ubiquitous chicken paillard has almost disappeared from local menus. This is the first time I’ve seen it in quite a while, and in Richardson’s hands, it makes a first-rate comeback. Pounded thin, but not super-thin, the organic chicken breast is sauteed in butter with capers and a squirt of lemon. Light and savory, it comes with smashed bliss potatoes and sauteed rapini.

The roast chicken, half a bird for $17, is browned to a crisp, but still juicy -- a fine supper with its salad of frisee and assorted embellishments. I can also recommend the Oregon tilapia, a nice piece of fish with good flavor, crisped at the edges and escorted by baby beets, fennel and olives.

On any given night, the waiter should be able to tell you about a couple of specials, but every couple of weeks the chef shuffles the regular list of dishes slightly too, keeping the most popular and cycling in something new. Recently, it was short ribs braised in stout with garlic smashed (not mashed) potatoes and bacon. The Belgians use beer as a braising liquid all the time, and it makes sense. The meaty short ribs cooked this way are much lighter than red wine-braised versions. The beer seems to let the essential beefiness of the ribs come through more clearly. On a chilly night, the dish is very welcome.

The one vegetarian entree doesn’t sound promising at face value: roasted squash and chickpea stew. But the night I try it, the loose stew of butternut squash with zucchini and chickpeas dotted with sultana raisins and served with fluffy mint-suffused couscous and yogurt is a favorite of almost everybody at the table. There are a number of sides that are vegetarian too, including an updated mac ‘n’ cheese.

Although it’s still very much a work in progress, the wine list needs help. Right now there’s an unprecedented amount of great wine out there on the market at all price levels, and this list doesn’t reflect that.

Come dessert at Nook Bistro, adults can eat like kids again. That peanut butter pecan bread pudding absolutely didn’t do it for me -- too rich, and the peanut butter wasn’t such a good idea -- but the brownie cup, now I could go for that. Not exactly a souffle, it’s more like a brownie baked in a coffee cup, served warm, with a ball of vanilla ice cream. What’s not to like?

Cobbler made with different fruits, depending on the season, gets a slippery topping, almost like pie filling, but it goes down very easy nevertheless. Espresso cream, the chef’s take on panna cotta, would be perfectly delicious with a touch less gelatin.

With its savvy menu of moderately priced American comfort food, Nook Bistro is the kind of place where you can afford to become a regular. It’s a place to meet friends before a film at the Nuart or the Royale, drop in for a bite at lunch, or consider a haven on nights alone when you can grab a seat at the bar or the communal table. The menu is smart and simple, with no pretense of reinventing the wheel, which is sometimes a good thing. L.A. could definitely use a few more places like this one.

*

Nook Bistro

Rating: **

Location: 11628 Santa Monica Blvd. (at Barry, between Barrington and Federal), Los Angeles; (310) 207-5160; fax (310) 207-5220; www.nookbistro.com.

Ambience: Neighborhood bistro in a surprising loft-like space in a nondescript strip mall. Casual and fun, it attracts a diverse crowd for its sensible and delicious moderately priced fare.

Service: Personable and efficient

Price: Small dishes, $6 to $10; soup, $3 to $6; big plates, $10 to $20; sides, $3 to $6; desserts, $6; lunch items, $6 to $11.

Best dishes: Mussels with linguica sausage; crispy calamari and wasabi dipping sauce; Nook dinner salad; pancetta-wrapped asparagus and poached egg; house lentil vegetable soup with feta; organic roasted chicken; stout-braised short ribs; chicken paillard; Oregon tilapia with roasted beets; roasted squash and chickpea stew; brownie cup; apple crumble.

Wine list: A work in progress. Corkage, $10.

Best table: The one set in an alcove at the back.

Details: Open for lunch Monday through Friday from 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. and for dinner Monday through Saturday from 5 to 10 p.m. Beer and wine. Lot and street 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.