A wine bar welcome

THE word “rustic,” when applied to a restaurant, conjures up visions of hearty, homey dishes and rough wooden tables drawn up in front of a fire where sausages or birds cook over the embers. You certainly don’t expect a place with the distinctly urban vibe of the new Rustic Canyon Wine Bar and Seasonal Kitchen in Santa Monica. The 3-month-old restaurant sits on Wilshire Boulevard at 11th Street, with big picture windows that look out on a streetscape of resale shops and boutiques, not some swatch of bucolic countryside.

The name in fact comes from the canyon in the Santa Monica Mountains where a group of friends that included owner Josh Loeb used to get together at a house in the trees for dinners and wine tastings. The pleasures of sharing wine and food with friends in a relaxed setting inspired Loeb, who had worked at Capo, to try to bring some of the same neighborhood spirit to this new restaurant.

At Rustic Canyon, the food is homey, the products mostly local and very seasonal and the wines pleasant and approachable. Take a quick gander through the menu and you’ll notice words such as “fresh,” “natural,” “pan-roasted” and “cast-iron” -- that are a siren call to the urban appetite.

Rustic Canyon seems to have struck a nerve with Santa Monica restaurant goers. It’s not trendy. No big-name designer or flotilla of votive lights is involved. The bar doesn’t make pretty tinted cocktails or serve $600 bottles of tequila. No paparazzi are hanging round the door. And yet, there’s such a need for a place where you can have a good meal, check in with friends and feel like a regular that the place is packed most nights. Most likely, even if you reserve ahead, there will be a wait for your table.

And so you may find yourself checking the blackboard above the four-seater bar where the 20 wines by the glass have been written out in white chalk. Though it’s not the most forward-looking list on the planet, there’s something for everyone. Novices can step up and recognize Navarro Chardonnay from Mendocino and order a glass. Wine buffs may want to taste the latest vintage of Jean Chauvenet’s Nuits-St-Georges premier cru “Les Damodes.” The bartender is cheerful and helpful. The pours aren’t skimpy. But where can you sit? There are just those four bar stools and a few low seats with an improvised coffee table in front. Mostly, you’re left standing around like at a cocktail party.

But the place has much better food than most such gatherings, and it’s food that goes with wine. The chef is Samir Mohajer, who last worked at the Little Door on West 3rd Street. Despite that weak recommendation, this guy can cook. Prime example: his Moroccan salad plate with a gentle chickpea puree, beautiful oil-slicked olives, roasted sweet peppers and more, along with grilled flatbread and a dab of fiery, house-made harissa.

His seasoning is vibrant, yet shrewdly balanced so that it doesn’t overwhelm the wine. And anybody who can turn out a salad like his blood orange, avocado and baby gem lettuce salad deserves a closer look. It’s just about perfect, the avocados ripe and luscious, the beautifully balanced dressing made with avocado oil and blood-orange juice.

I like that as soon as you sit down, someone will bring out cracker breads and small crocks filled with butter and a spicy tapenade. As an appetizer, a big bowl of mussels steamed in white wine fired with garlic and chile flakes is served with rafts of grilled bread to soak up all the gutsy broth.

Rounds of creamy polenta are topped with delicious sauteed mushrooms. Sliced filet mignon, sort of an elevated carpaccio, makes a fine first course too, with horseradish cream.

Rustic Canyon uses meats from Paul Bertolli’s Fra’ Mani for the charcuterie plate and they are top notch. That said, the portion is incredibly mingy for $14: There’s really not enough for four to share. It’s a rare lapse, though. Most of the dishes are very generous for the price and the quality , which is part of what makes the restaurant so appealing for an everyday meal.

Rustic Canyon belongs to the updated breed of neighborhood restaurants like Literati II, Nook, Canele, and BLD that are opening promising new territory for the L.A. dining scene. Instead of focusing on special occasion dining, these more modest restaurants are offering sophisticated and earthy everyday food. It’s a sign that Los Angeles is growing up as a food culture.

Come in jeans. Come dressed for the opera. I’ve seen both crowds at Rustic Canyon, along with scruffy urban nerds, academic types, doctors from nearby St. John’s, lone diners reading a page-turner. I wouldn’t, however, be so quick to grab one of the booths along the wall. There is, ahem, a slight design glitch. Unless you’re the size of Paris or Nicole, you won’t be able to breathe. This is beyond cozy. But I do love sitting under the hanging lamps impressed with a faux bois pattern. And any of the other tables are comfortable, especially those along a banquette in front of the windows.

Servers are dressed in brown T-shirts emblazoned with a tree in silhouette. That too is very rustic. And our waiter wears her hair in pigtails like in “Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.” She also happens to be genuinely welcoming and hospitable. See what I mean? Not trendy. But I feel for her (and for me and my guests as well). The noise level in the restaurant is excruciating unless you come very early or late on the off-chance that the place might be less than packed. However, the owners are planning to install sound panels in the next couple of weeks to quiet things down.

Fortunately, the food is so appealing, you can tune into that if you can’t tune into your fellow diners.

As for heartier fare, the “cast-iron” burger is a big, juicy patty of beef cooked in a smoking hot cast-iron skillet, so it’s seared on the outside and the inside -- the way I ordered it, a true medium rare. It comes with apple-wood-smoked bacon, a tangle of wild arugula greens and Point Reyes blue cheese. The last, for me, is just too strong on a burger, and next time, I’ll order it without.

Pan-roasted half chicken has been on the menu since day one, and has gone through different permutations, all worthy. Initially, it came with roasted root vegetables and pan au jus, later with couscous, and this month with caramelized pearl onions, mashed Yukon gold potatoes and the pan juices. However the chef is inspired to serve it, this is a fine bird, and it’s generous enough to share.

Vegetarians can go straight to the root vegetable pot pie. Somebody here knows how to make a mean pie crust; its rich buttery goodness is terrific with the root vegetables -- potatoes, carrots, turnips, parsnips, whatever the chef turns up.

There’s also a thick Berkshire pork porterhouse with delicious sauteed baby chard and piping hot mac ‘n’ cheese that demands a big appetite. Sometimes, though, the pork was a little dried out. Lamb chops are fabulous, thick double chops that come with watercress sauteed with currants. The New Zealand lamb tastes like lamb and is perfectly cooked to a deep rose at the center.

And though every main course comes with its own sides, you can also order extra ones, like the earthy pan-roasted Jerusalem artichokes or a rich Garnet yam and Gruyere gratin. Or hand-cut French fries with ketchup and aioli. Make that two orders for the table to prevent greedy gobblers getting more than their fair share of these terrific frites.

Desserts also delve into the comfort zone with a Spanish rice pudding with Valrhona chocolate buried at the bottom. The same chocolate makes an appearance in Rustic Canyon’s signature rocky road bread pudding. It’s a daunting bowl of creamy soft bread chunks scattered with chopped almonds with dark chocolate melted deep into the layers under a blanket of marshmallow cream. That is, I would suggest, hearty enough for any urban rustic.

Rustic Canyon isn’t about fine dining. And yet the chef is sensible enough to put his all into cooking a pan-roasted chicken or a pork chop. The hearty Cal-Mediterranean dishes may sound plain, but the skill of the cooking and the smart way the flavors on the plates are put together make this Santa Monica restaurant stand out as a prime example of the new neighborhood restaurant. We all want a spot like this nearby -- where we can settle in for an evening of eating and drinking with friends and be treated well enough to want to make it our neighborhood hang.

virbila@latimes.com

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Rustic Canyon Wine Bar and Seasonal Kitchen

Rating: **

Location: 1119 Wilshire Blvd. (at 11th Street), Santa Monica, (310) 393-7050; www.rusticcanyonrestaurant.com.

Ambience: Smart neighborhood restaurant and wine bar with urban good looks, a woodsy theme and Mediterranean-inspired comfort food.

Service: Warm and hospitable.

Price: Small plates and appetizers, $8 to $16; mains, $14 to $30; cheese plate, $14; sides, $8; sweets, $8.

Best dishes: Blood orange, avocado and baby gem salad, Fra’ Mani salumi plate, mixed Moroccan salad plate, “cast-iron” burger, pan-roasted half-chicken, porterhouse pork, garnet yam gratin, crispy hand-cut fries, rocky road bread pudding.

Wine list: Twenty wines by the glass and a modest wine list with something for everyone; corkage fee, $25.

Best table: One in the left corner or near the windows.

Details: Open 5:30 to 11 p.m. Tuesdays-Sundays; after April 9, open 5:30 to 10:30 p.m. Sundays-Thursdays and 5:30 to 11:30 Fridays and Saturdays.

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.