A farm kitchen, but not really

I’M tucking into breakfast at the new restaurant Tart at Farmer’s Daughter Hotel and wondering if a rooster crow wakes the motley crew that favors this well-priced, well-located hotel. Nah, probably not.

Of course, the revamped motel across the street from the original Farmer’s Market on Fairfax does sport a giant blue-and-white gingham pattern on its facade. And wood that looks as if it was salvaged from an old barn is used to trim the public rooms.

The logo is a silhouette of a fetching farm maid with a watering can, and from the reception area, sliding glass doors open onto a sprawling outdoor patio decorated with a frieze of antique farm implements and succulents sprouting from rusted steel containers.

It’s all very fun and tongue-in-cheek for a hotel restaurant. Wood picnic tables shelter under a galvanized tin overhang, populated at breakfast by guests in dark Ray-Bans who’ve possibly overindulged in L.A. nightlife. Maybe it’s the way they’re hunkered down over cups of good, strong joe and greet the waiter with whoops of joy when their plates of bagel and smoked salmon arrive, or their fried eggs with biscuits and gravy.

Inside, Tart looks like a Surrealist’s farm kitchen, complete with a hutch that holds the restaurant’s collection of cream and aqua china, lace-patterned cabinet doors and captain’s chairs pulled up to the tables. It’s cozy and, well, cute, in an offhand way. Hard to believe this is the same spot where Fred Eric defined the new club food at Olive in the mid-’90s.

The restaurant recently added dinner with a menu that’s more ambitious than breakfast or lunch offerings, and at this point, more uneven. Start with something from the “cru” or “leaves and oils” sections of the menu.

Under cru, or raw, there’s a tropical ceviche of lobster with ripe mango and smoky chipotle chile drenched in lime that I quite liked, scallop carpaccio with a caviar yuzu cream, or seared yellowfin tuna with a ginger mojo. Organic greens with lotus root and little teardrop tomatoes in a blood orange vinaigrette work nicely. Crab cakes with a poblano corn emulsion are decent too. But the Spanish chorizo soup needs reworking: It’s very bland and thick enough to stand in for wallpaper paste.

Main courses include wild salmon with baby artichokes and fingerling potatoes, blackened swordfish with roasted corn hash, and a veal chop flavored with sage and pancetta. Cowboy steak with plantain chipotle mash, and a chimichurri sauce made with opal basil is terrific on the night I tried it.

Desserts include chocolate molten cake (no escaping that dessert anywhere anytime) and pecan tart. But it would be nice to see some old-fashioned fruit pies or, come peach season, a real cobbler too.

To note: At brunch or lunch, the kitchen turns out an excellent burger with smoked cheddar, a bargain at $9.

Come full-tilt summer, it’s going to be hard to get one of those coveted outdoor tables. Get ‘em while you can.

*

Tart

Where: Farmer’s Daughter Hotel, 115 S. Fairfax Ave., L.A.

When: Open 7 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. daily

Price: Breakfast items, $6 to $14; lunch appetizers, $8 to $14; sandwiches and wraps, $12 to $18; main courses, $9 to $21; dinner appetizers, $9 to $21; main courses, $24 to $45.

Info: (323) 556-2608