RESTAURANT REVIEW : 442 Delivers Deliciously Hip Ambience

You have to know it’s there. Like a rock club. Or some of the hipper restaurants. The only clue that the curtained storefront at 442 N. Fairfax Ave. is a restaurant is a small cryptic sign hung on the door that says “Oven is on.”

The restaurant 442 is a cave of a place. Little. Dark. Candlelit. A banquette covered in beautiful damask fabric is strewn with soft, loose cushions. The table tops are a dull gold foil. As in other too-hip-to-live restaurants, the tables are nuzzled together, terribly close. Textured walls are rubbed with pigment. The decor could be classed as grandmother hip.

Handsome guys work the bar, but they’re more pleasing for their tight, black T-shirts than for their skill with the cappuccino system.

Waitresses and hostesses all seem to weigh less than 100 pounds. And they wear leggings. Being waited on by some of L.A.’s skinniest women invariably raises the question: If I eat the food here, could I look like that ?

The answer, I’m afraid, is yes.

The chef prepares food without dairy products, with little oil, with no sugar. Fish, poultry and vegetable dishes appear on the menu, but no red meat is available. This is a moderate, admirable approach to healthier eating. And yet . . .

Other than a hunk of dull white bread served with olive oil for dipping, the first thing I ate at 442 was a salad, on special, with barbecued vegetables and vegetarian sushi made with brown rice. The greens were undressed and though there were a few slices of pink ginger, some soy sauce and wasabi for the sushi, the whole plate of food was bland. It turned out that the salad was supposed to come with dressing, but when a waitress brought some on the side, it didn’t help.

The nice cornmeal crust on the crab cakes reminded me of eating trout on a camping trip, but the cakes themselves didn’t taste like much.

A Caesar salad was simple and straightforward. But the salad called “fresh grilled fish nicoise” with black olive-basil dressing, roasted (rather than boiled) potatoes and a clump of marinated peppers was way too cluttered.

Similarly, the so-called “penne with lots of things” did indeed come with lots of things: tomatoes, sun-dried tomatoes, garlic, olives, peppers, white beans, mushrooms. The result was sheer murkiness.

Can chiles rellenos be bland? Even if they’re spicy hot? Sounds impossible, but 442’s big pasilla chiles are stuffed with a crumbly tofu corn filling that tastes like scrambled eggs stripped of flavor.

The problem here is that the chef seems to do things differently just for the sake of being different.

Still, there are some worthy dishes here: Chicken comes well-breaded and nicely cooked--and it’s served with swirls of good mashed potatoes. I also liked a juicy piece of salmon served with tomato-soaked corn and sweet, fresh pesto-coated grilled shrimp with roasted peppers.

The desserts are sweetened only with maple. This works well in two desserts: a pecan tart and a slice of pumpkin pie (just avoid the swirls of grainy tofu-cream cheese garnish). But an orange biscotti was a mealy travesty.

In time, the chef may come to realize that healthy food doesn’t have to be odd in concept and bland in taste. In the meantime, 442 should stay busy serving customers who are too hip to care if the food they’re eating is as delicious as their surroundings.

* 442, 442 N. Fairfax Ave., Los Angeles, (213) 651-4421. Dinner Tuesday through Sunday. Full bar. Valet parking. American Express, MasterCard, Visa. Dinner for two, food only, $34 to $60.