The food scores -- and there’s sports too

HEADING to Van Nuys to Springbok Bar & Grill, L.A.’s only South African restaurant, I envisioned a modest, family-owned spot where I might sample a few of those wonderful South African wines and explore what I’d heard was a delicious poly-cultural cuisine with European, Malaysian, East Indian and African elements. A cuisine, it would seem, perfectly suited to L.A. tastes.

At first, my fantasy was completely crushed by the restaurant’s sports bar setting; I was convinced I’d be in for a meal of casually prepared pub grub.

The restaurant’s two knotty pine-paneled rooms are dominated by two large TV screens flashing South African rugby games and assorted sports events. A rainbow-hued jukebox pumps out rock oldies and country and western tunes.

Often, there’s a crowd of guys relaxing after soccer practice across the way at the huge Lake Balboa Park, and congenial groups of regulars stand around in clusters nursing cold ones or belly up to the large, comfortable bar.

Springbok does serve Buffalo wings, albeit a South African version, and there’s a selection of 14 microbrews and international beers on tap.

But most of the menu is a dramatic departure from stereotypical bar snacks. Chef Trevor Nettmann cooks up well-executed versions of urban South Africa’s top culinary hits in all their multicultural glory: curries, chile sauces and meaty barbecues that nowadays are to that country what pizza and bagels are here.

If you sit in the quieter room adjacent to the bar, it’s easier to appreciate the South African details of the restaurant’s decor, which, with its rustic wooden furniture and framed pictures of wildlife, stops slightly short of kitsch.

Still, the vast flat TV screen looms over the tables (although it’s mercifully silent), so there’s no escaping the sports aspect which, the menu explains, “is an integral part of South African life.”

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Sounds exotic

THE cooking is more refined, with more attention to detail than the atmosphere would suggest. Subtly spiced Naidoo’s Durban curry -- chicken, lamb or beef -- comes with a parade of fresh contrasting-flavored accompaniments: a sambal of spiced shredded carrot, tomato-chile salsa, sweet chutney and shredded coconut.

Exotic-sounding menu items aren’t as unfamiliar as they may seem. “Monkeygland” sauce? Simply a mixture of onions, peppers and tomatoes, our server said, listed by its popular name so as to tweak American sensibilities.

Sosaties? A variation on kebabs or satays. Boerewors? Sausage.

The searingly spicy peri-peri sauce made with tiny red peppers is a popular condiment borrowed from South Africa’s neighbor Mozambique, formerly a colony of Portugal. It’s slathered over thinly sliced grilled chicken to make a dish called “Porto chicken peri-peri.” The same sauce coats appetizer skewers of grilled chicken livers.

A thin veil of sweeter, milder chile sauce flavors fabulously moist grilled Mozambique queen tiger prawns, butterflied in their shells.

Sosaties are skewers of juicy chicken chunks interspersed with various colors of bell peppers, lightly painted with apricot glaze and served on a generous bed of seasoned rice. Like many entrees here, they come with a salad of baby greens.

South Africans are wild about their braaivleis, or barbecues. Shortened to braai in daily parlance, the meal is a staple both in the cities or out back in the grazing land of the Karoo.

Springbok’s version, the Freestate braai pack, is positively opulent, and the guys in the kitchen grill the meats precisely to your liking. The “pack” or platter holds two intriguingly seasoned lamb chops, properly seared filet mignon and a long length of grilled boerewors. This somewhat lean but robust sausage, made in-house, is imbued with the heady aromas of coriander, cinnamon and nutmeg.

The one meat that expat South Africans will likely miss, though, is actual springbok. The small relative of the antelope is as popular there as hamburger is here. It makes the best biltong, a dry-cured meat (call it South African prosciutto) that everyone snacks on. Springbok the restaurant makes its own, very successful version of biltong from beef.

There’s a full bar and a good beer selection. House wines, all from the South African conglomerate KWV, are serviceable -- no boutique finds, alas.

The kitchen always seems to have run out of Springbok’s most popular dessert, chocolate ice cream-topped chocolate souffle. Others are what Brits would call nursery food -- banana and vanilla wafer pudding and milk tart, a rather firm custard-like pie.

Expats and their friends in the neighborhood have kept Springbok busier and busier as word of the good food and the hail-fellow-well-met hospitality has gotten out. Busy enough to warrant an expansion. A sibling Springbok with the same look and food opened four months ago at Shoreline Village in Long Beach, doubling the number of South African restaurants in the L.A. area just like that.

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Springbok Bar & Grill

Location: 16153 Victory Blvd., Van Nuys, (818) 988-9786; and 423-A, Shoreline Village Drive, Long Beach, (562) 437-3734. www.springbokbar.com

Price: Appetizers, $2 to $7; entrees, $10 to $24; sandwiches and burgers, $6.50 to $10.

Best dishes: Mozambique grilled tiger prawns, Freestate braai pack, Porto chicken peri-peri, Naidoo’s Durban curry, Springbok bar burger with “monkeygland” sauce.

Details: Open 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Full bar. Lot and street parking. All major credit cards.