Food for the Celebrity-Conscious

It’s 2:30 (the earliest lunch reservation I could get on a recent Friday afternoon) and the new Drai’s Cafe is quite the scene. A Mercedes 300 coupe bearing the vanity plates of an ICM agent glides away from the valet, while a woman in a blue catsuit and black ostrich-feather purse waits for her car, blowing kisses at acquaintances. At well past 3, we’re still waiting outside for our table when Sharon Stone emerges from the clubby Beverly Hills restaurant. No wonder no one wanted to leave.

Once we’ve been seated at one of the eight leopard-velvet booths, we pounce on the menus and order wine by the glass. “I have a cabernet from Bordeaux and a French merlot,” the waiter volunteers. “And a Napa Valley chardonnay and a Pouilly-Fuisse.” He’s sure of neither producer nor year--and acts as if it would be too much trouble to find out either.

Around us, diners pick at their plates, murmur urgently into cell phones and crane their necks to see who might be hidden behind a palm or tucked into a banquette. As at any place where the beautiful people eat, some dishes are lighter, including the soups made without dairy products. Still, Drai’s Cafe is just a stripped-down version of Drai’s, owner Victor Drai’s celebrity-packed West Hollywood restaurant, which means the food (listed in ascending order of price) is familiar and not the least bit challenging.

French chef Claude Segal, also head of the kitchen at Drai’s, plies his clientele with main course salads, especially popular during lunch. Maine lobster salad is a pretty composition of fresh lobster chunks, feathery greens and ribbons of melon and papaya in a sprightly dressing. Seared tuna salad, rare fish rolled in sesame seeds and arranged next to shredded cabbage, is doused in what tastes like straight rice vinegar. So much for complexity. More appealing is veal shank salad, flavorful boned veal, baby carrots, turnips, leeks and pea pods splashed in warm vinaigrette. Oxtail salad comes as a surprise, the boned meat served over coins of warm potato. “People will eat anything if you call it salad,” one of my friends astutely observes.

Lunch and dinner menus are virtually identical, but customers at night look more like the old Chasen’s or Bistro Garden crowd. With the exception of the woefully waterlogged chilled artichoke, appetizers are plain but passable: steamed asparagus with a gentle mustard dressing; poached leeks, served warm in balsamic vinaigrette; smoked salmon with all the fixings. I only wish the kitchen had used better anchovies in the (eggless) Caesar and hadn’t spoiled the Belgian endive and Roquefort salad with truffle oil. There’s also a pleasant organic carrot soup spiked with fresh ginger and a thick fava bean soup laced with asparagus.

Grilled fish seems to be a popular dinner entree. The whitefish in butter and lemon sauce and strewn with capers and emerald green snow peas is good. And, for ahi fans, the generous tuna steak garnished with warm tomato marmalade scented with garlic and lemon will do nicely.

Steak tartare, however, is ordinary and, for the culinarily disadvantaged, labeled “served raw.” The pale blond fries are not bad, though, and lamb chops are perfectly fine. And while pepper steak is filet mignon heavily encrusted with cracked peppercorns, too bad it’s not a more flavorful cut of beef.

The wine list is tailored for people who know little about wines. It features a handful of well-known names; the rest, particularly French bottles, are from little-known houses and off years, all wildly overpriced. Should you want to bring something more interesting, corkage is a hefty $20.

Ah, well, at least you can catch action star Christopher Lambert huddled with Victor Drai at the bar. And study the Beverly Hills look, that peculiar mix of Gucci loafers and ostentatious belt buckles for men, big hair and shapely little suits with gold buttons for women. So your meal isn’t a total wash. You had some fun. You saw some celebs. You were there.

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DRAI’S CAFE

CUISINE: French-California. AMBIENCE: Leopard-print booths, banquettes, palms. BEST DISHES: Steamed asparagus, lobster salad, veal shank salad, grilled whitefish. WINE PICK: Sanford Pinot Noir, 1994, Santa Barbara. FACTS: 369 N. Bedford Drive, Beverly Hills; (310) 247-2005. Closed Sunday. Dinner for two, food only, $50 to $85. Corkage $20. Valet parking.