Bright lights, and big city views

WHY is it that a restaurant with a view is almost guaranteed to have terrible food? It doesn’t seem to matter what kind of view it is -- the sea, the city lights, the mountains. Restaurateurs know people will come for the romantic panorama and they will pay big bucks to be there. Tourists make a beeline for the place. And locals will come for birthdays and anniversaries because a view gives such a sense of place and occasion.

In June, the new Hotel Angeleno in the former Holiday Inn tower below the Getty Center opened West, its penthouse restaurant. And the concept for that 17th-floor space sounded smart: an Italian steakhouse. We’ve got a zillion steakhouses, but none that fancy themselves Italian, so at least it’s something different.

But West is having something of an identity crisis already. The owners are trying to do both a happening lounge and a fine restaurant, and it’s an uneasy combination. There’s also a disconnect between the guests of the hotel -- families and business travelers -- with the aggressive bar scene upstairs.

It looks good, though. Designer and co-owner Joanna Perlman has waved her magic wand and transformed the formerly dumpy hotel into something sleek and fashionable in a midcentury kind of way. Walls are covered in dark gray pebbles. The furniture is lean and stylish with eye-catching accents.

Ten paces across the hotel lobby and you’re in the elevator headed up to the restaurant. Bing. A grubby 11-year-old stares at us from floor 7, leaps aboard and then scrambles out, giggling, just as the doors wheeze together.

Bing. The doors open at the restaurant level in front of a desk where two hosts work the phones and check reservations. Just inside, white roses nod in glass vases.

Antipasto prevails

THE dining room follows the curve of the tower and when we’re seated at a table next to the wraparound windows, we stare down. The 405 is a beautiful ribbon of lights, headlights moving fast as whitewater, while the red tail lights, like a zillion cigarettes glowing in the dark, slow to a crawl.

On a weekday night, the room is relatively quiet. On the weekend, watch out. A DJ is mixing the music and by 9, the elevators begin to disgorge a young, party-ready crowd. Soon the music swells to ear-splitting decibels. Maybe it’s tolerable if you’re sitting at the very far end of the room, but anywhere near the bar it’s impossible to hear a word -- and I mean literally a word -- anyone at the table is saying. When we asked one night if the music could possibly be turned down, the answer was that the owner liked it that way.

West’s menu offers a slew of antipasto plates to start. They’re large enough for everyone at a table of four to get a taste. At $6 each, think of it as a make-your-own antipasti spread. The burrata with roasted red peppers is fresh and creamy, fabulous with strips of charred sweet red peppers.

Every one we order is delicious: tender baby artichokes perfumed with lemon and olive oil, and grilled spring onions with a satiny aioli. House-cured white anchovies have a nice vinegary bite, offset by almonds and crisp sliced celery. If only the kitchen can keep it up.

The other menu category of interest is crudo, which can be best explained as Italian sashimi. West offers fine oysters on the half shell as crudo. Slivers of raw fluke with a touch of Meyer lemon, hot pepper and sea salt is light and refreshing. Silky grappa-cured salmon with horseradish mascarpone is enjoyable too. Tuna carpaccio, though, doesn’t have the quality of the best sashimi. In the end, the crudo is pleasant but not that compelling for the price.

But with the exception of those small plates, this kitchen doesn’t seem to have a clue about Italian food. For example, servers always make a big point of recommending the porcini gnocchi and so I finally succumb and order it. Unfortunately, these are dense plugs of dough flavored aggressively with dried porcini and swimming in a heavy-handed mushroom cream. There’s no getting around it: They’re terrible.

Ho-hum pasta, steak

DUNGENESS crab and lobster Bolognese in an overly reduced tomato sauce is made with squiggly noodles thick as udon and very chewy. I can’t decide if they’re the result of someone’s first efforts at making pasta or if they’ve been extruded from a machine. Whatever the kitchen is doing, it’s not working.

Short-rib ravioli sounds interesting, but turns out to be three huge stuffed squares of pasta, the dough so thick and stiff the corners have curled up. Not a pretty picture. The filling is pleasantly rich, but I can’t get past that chewy pasta dough.

Main courses don’t have much personality and are, in general, poorly executed. You’d think, at the very least, you could get a great steak. I do like the Italian theme with the sauces -- roasted garlic-Gorgonzola butter, a lemon-herb aioli or a Barolo reduction -- but after the novelty of the view wears off the steaks move center stage, and frankly, they don’t have the quality to make West a destination.

On a recent visit, one of my guests covetously keeps an eye on the Porterhouse his wife ordered as it makes its way around the table, worried that by the time the plate gets to him, there won’t be much left. He needn’t worry: Each of us just takes a bite or two before passing it on. The texture is flabby and it doesn’t have a very rich flavor. The same goes for the rib-eye steak with hot pepper. It’s not in the least memorable. Rack of lamb coated with a Dijon mustard crust is not remarkable but perfectly fine.

Roasted “Tuscan-style” country chicken is good one night, but so dried out another time I wonder if somebody forgot it under the heat lamp. And what’s with the sage Chardonnay gravy? That’s hardly Tuscan. Not the gravy. Not the Chardonnay.

I like the fact that half a dozen wines are offered in an 8-ounce or 16-ounce carafe, as well as a bottle. The wine list, organized by adjectives like “charming,” and “rustic,” is sketchier on Italian wines than you’d expect at a place billing itself as an Italian steakhouse, but among those offered are some excellent bottles, such as the 2004 Rosato from Castello di Ama or the 2003 Scarrone Barbera d’Alba from Vietti.

I suspect chef Josh Moulton, whose title is executive chef, is delegating kitchen duties. It seems inconceivable that someone with his credentials (he was an executive sous chef at Union Square Cafe in New York some years ago) would turn out main courses this mediocre on a regular basis. It could be the kitchen staff is too raw at this point to work as an effective team.

The dining room staff needs some seasoning too. One night a group of runners hovered around our table with the main courses, panicked because no one had yet removed our appetizers. These kinds of glitches make it seem like amateur night at this high-end restaurant, though I have to say the sheer good spirits of some of the waiters are among West’s best assets.

I wish I could say desserts offered some respite. The best is a semifreddo of peanut butter ice cream inside a chocolate shell. There’s also the ubiquitous molten chocolate cake.

In the tradition of so many other restaurants with a view, the best strategy for enjoying West’s handsome room and location is to drop in early for drinks. This would be a great spot to wait the traffic out. Order a glass of wine and a couple of antipasto plates, and by the time you can see those red tail lights moving again, you’re off.

virbila@latimes.com

*

West Restaurant & Lounge

Rating: Half a star

Location: Hotel Angeleno, 170 N. Church Lane, Los Angeles; (310) 481-7878; www.westatangeleno.com.

Ambience: Penthouse restaurant with panoramic views of the city and the ribbons of lights snaking along the 405. Too bad the lounge and bar scene, complete with pounding music, distracts so much from the dining experience.

Service: Varies from unprofessional and chaotic to enthusiastic and helpful, depending on your server.

Price: Antipasto plates, $5; small plates, $9 to $15; crudo, $14; roasts, steaks and chops, $22 to $36; desserts, $9 to $14.

Best dishes: Antipasto plates such as grilled baby artichokes with lemon and olive oil, burrata cheese with hot and sweet peppers, or grilled radicchio. Crudo, which is Italian raw fish. In other words, the lounge menu.

Wine list: Not as strong on Italian wines as you’d expect for an Italian steakhouse, but what they have is first rate. Half a dozen wines served in 8- or 16-ounce carafes as well as bottles. Corkage fee, $20.

Best table: One along the window at the back of the restaurant where you might be able to hear yourself think.

Details: Open daily for breakfast from 6:30 to 10:30 a.m., for lunch from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. and for dinner from 5:30 to 10:30 p.m. Lounge menu served from noon to midnight. Full bar. Valet parking, $4.

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.