A wine bar that gets it right

IF you haven’t already noticed, we’re in the throes of a wine bar craze, with new ones popping up seemingly every week and more on the way. But for all the glossy new venues, both the serious and clueless, not many achieve a genuine sense of place.

I got much of my wine education in Paris wine bars that exuded atmosphere. One may specialize in Sancerre, another in Beaujolais or wines of the Loire or the Rhone valleys. At any of these places you could drink famous bottles, but also wines from obscure local producers.

My favorite was a wine bar in one of the outlying arrondissements. Whenever I walked in, I’d find the same regulars seated at the bar, the same zinc covered with an array of decanters, and the enticing scent of simple French cooking. Not to mention the extraordinary bottles that the owner unearthed from the cellar once you achieved the status of regular.

Lately I’ve found a substitute for that home away from home here in L.A. Of all the wine bars I’ve been to this year, it’s Tasca on West 3rd Street at Crescent Heights Boulevard that brings up memories of that lost Paris hangout. The wines aren’t at all the main draw: After more than a year of delays, Tasca just got its wine license in February, so the wine list is still under construction. What draws me there is that elusive sense of place.

Walk in the door and you feel welcomed. It seems like such a simple thing, but few restaurants get it right. I’m not talking about a phalanx of junior managers slipping you an insincere smile as they size you up and then try to stick you with the worst table in the room. Everyone who works at Tasca has an instinctive sense of how to be warm and hospitable. The space works too, with no big-name designer in sight and a limited budget.

Comfort zone

YOU can intuit it in the way people seated along the bar lean into each other and interact with the bartender or the host. Everyone at table is digging into their food with abandon, licking the mussel juices from their fingers, offering a bite of crostini to someone at the next table, enjoying the conversation at their own table. There is no scene, no whispered nudges or heads turning to get a glimpse of celebrity or notoriety. Tasca is the antithesis of trendy.

The food is fairly traditional too. A brown paper menu printed in a retro typeface introduces small plates, salads and soups on the front page, large plates, sides and desserts on the reverse. Of course, there’s a little dish of oil-slicked olives and toasted nuts. And the requisite charcuterie plate. But here, instead of an Italian assortment, the cured meats are Spanish-inflected, most from a local producer: jamon serrano (Spain’s answer to prosciutto) and a couple of different pimiento-streaked chorizo along with a dusky piquillo pepper tapenade and some kalamata olives.

I like that chef Nano Crespo, who has worked at Amalfi and Il Sole, offers chicken liver mousse. When is the last time you’ve seen that on a menu in L.A.? During Julia Child’s heyday, every fledgling cook tried out her excellent recipe and felt like a genius, so it’s nice to revisit a similar silky chicken liver mousse at Tasca. Its gently earthy taste lends itself to a glass of either red or white.

Order up a slew of dishes to share from the small-plates side of the menu. Gambas al ajillo are a lusty tribute to the classic tapas dish, pink curls of tails-on shrimp sauteed in garlic and olive oil, a brilliant white wine match. Salt cod brandade arrives in an oval casserole with skinny toasts for spreading with the garlicky mix of shredded salt cod and potato. This one is more cod than potatoes, less creamy than they make it in the Veneto region, but delicious.

Another dish I can never resist ordering is patatas a la Riojana. The chunks of soft potato tossed with spicy chorizo in a smoked paprika sauce, served hot, always disappear in a flash.

What all these dishes have in common is a comfort factor. They’re not complicated. They don’t demand attention. Rustic and direct, they’re closer to the home cooking of France or Italy or Spain than real restaurant fare. Portions are too big to be called tapas, really, and the menu is larger than most French wine bars. Americans tend to feel hemmed in without a long list of choices. And this, the owners understand.

I must have eaten my way through the entire menu a couple of times, and I haven’t had a bad dish yet. Still, some things are better than others. Moules frites is definitely one of the better ones. The mussels are plump and fresh, steamed in a saffron-tinged broth and served with a heap of piping hot, slender frites. Eat it all by yourself and it’s supper. Share it with friends and it’s the beginning of something beautiful.

Boudin noir is a regular too, a fat blood sausage fried with apples and onions that is delicious with a sturdy red such as a Malbec from Argentina or Toro from Spain -- and a highly unusual sighting on local menus.

I’m not a huge fan of boquerones, “white anchovies” pickled in vinegar. But I love Tasca’s crostini topped with sliced tomato, hard-boiled egg and the silvery anchovies. The chef strikes the perfect balance. The egg and the tomato mitigate the anchovies’ sharp vinegary-ness, and the result is terrific.

Old World sensibility

WITH its simple blue facade and the name picked out in gold in a simple script, Tasca looks as if it’s been dispensing wine and Mediterranean food to the local crowd for decades. Inside, it has the dark, good cheer of a tasca, or tavern, in Spain -- minus the flotilla of hams that traditionally covers the ceiling.

A long wooden bar set with turquoise glass votives runs along one wall. Glass hurricanes with fat pillar candles add more soft light, and simple fluted glass shades with clear glass bulbs hang overhead. A blackboard at the end of the bar lists the specials, and on the other wall is a long banquette of oxblood faux leather with a series of framed black-and-white photos of Italian landscapes hanging above.

Everybody I’ve ever brought to Tasca has been smitten. It’s loud, the chairs aren’t all that comfortable. It can be hard to park (though just last week, valet service began four nights a week). And yet the place is so congenial and the crowd such an interesting, motley mix of habitues who have hung in there for months while Tasca waited for its wine license to be approved. Some are tucking into steak frites, made here with a flatiron steak smeared with maitre d’hotel butter and served, naturellement, with fries.

Duck confit is very good too, and the burger topped with Cabrales cheese, a blue from Cantabria, Spain, is a worthy alternative to dressed-up burgers around town. I thought the Catalonian fish stew could use a bigger variety of seafood, but the homemade fettuccine tossed in a mushroom ragout wins big points on the Italian front.

The average price for the large plates is about $20, making Tasca that rarest of birds, a moderately priced restaurant that offers some real atmosphere along with the grub. It’s also very consistent. That’s because the owners -- Gustavo Landgrebe, Daniel Flores and Kristine Dadayan -- are running the restaurant themselves, not depending on hired hands who don’t care enough to make it work.

Now that Tasca has its wine license, the days of its $5 corkage fee are over; it’s now a very fair $15 with a limit of two bottles. Buy one from the list and the corkage fee is waived. Caitlin Stansbury, the sommelier at the Lodge, is helping put together the wine list. It offers about 75 bottles from the old and new worlds at moderate mark-ups, along with more than a dozen wines by the taste or glass.

With a name like Tasca, you might expect to find Spanish wines dominating the list. They certainly don’t in whites, where a Verdejo from Rueda and an Albarino from Galicia are the only Spanish contenders. The Mediterranean menu, though, goes with a wide range of wines and styles. In whites, there’s an excellent Savennieres from Domaine des Baumard in the Loire Valley, always a terrific wine and especially good in 2002. Consider, too, the Viognier from Andrew Murray in Santa Barbara.

In red, try the Mas de Fournel Pic St.-Loup from the Languedoc or the exuberant Bierzo from Spanish wine star Alvaro Palacios. It’s nice to see an oloroso sherry among the handful of dessert wines too. All in all, a pretty good selection for such a young list, though some selections could be sharper.

Come dessert, don’t miss the creme caramel, given a south-of-the-border twist with a dollop of dulce de leche. This is creme caramel as it is meant to be, rich and dense.

Maybe Tasca managed to survive those months because the place had already created so much goodwill. One night, before the restaurant got valet parking, I parked in the back as was the arrangement, and then realized I may have parked behind one of the nearby flower shop customer’s cars. When I ducked inside, I found out it was the shop owner’s. Never mind, he said, when I’m ready to leave, I’ll tell them next door.

I’m guessing he likes having Tasca in the neighborhood as much as everybody else.

virbila@latimes.com

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Tasca

Rating: **

Location: 8108 W. 3rd St. (at Crescent Heights Boulevard), Los Angeles, (323) 951-9890; tascawinebar.com.

Ambience: Charming Mediterranean wine bar with a laid-back atmosphere and an eclectic crowd.

Service: Warm and personable.

Price: Small plates, $6 to $16; salads and soups, $8 to $13; large plates, $15 to $23; sides, $5; desserts, $7.

Best dishes: Cod brandade, patatas a la Riojana, white anchovies with hard-boiled egg, gambas al ajillo, moules frites, baby lamb chops, homemade fettuccine with mushroom ragu, steak frites, creme caramel.

Wine list: Explores 75 wines from the old and new worlds, with an additional 12 choices by the taste or glass. Corkage fee, $15 with a limit of two bottles. Buy one from the list and the corkage fee is waived.

Best table: The back corner booth.

Details: Open 5 to 10:30 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, 5 p.m. to 12 a.m. Friday and Saturday. Beer and wine. Valet parking available Wednesday through Saturday, $4.50. Parking behind the restaurant as well.

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.