RESTAURANT REVIEW : Boyd Street Wins Food Revolution

Parma ham and Philly cheese steaks. Quesadillas and Cobb salads. Pastas and pasilla -marinated chicken breasts. Visible kitchen. Visible duct work. Track lighting. Cappuccino and martinis. Intelligent, capable waiters, some with ponytails. Gipsy Kings over the sound system.

Call it trendy. Call it formulaic. Call it anything you want, but 410 Boyd Street is a restaurant that unabashedly reaps the spoils of the food revolution of the ‘80s. Fifteen years ago, a stylish downtown spot such as this would have been a ‘70s fern bar/coffee shop. Who misses those lugubrious quiches, oily carrot cakes and drippy croissant sandwiches?

Formerly Cocola, 410 Boyd Street is on an elusive, short street near the loading docks and small wholesalers southeast of Little Tokyo. The long, tall room is stark black and white. Behind the bar, where in Cocola’s early days, a magnificent Chamberlain sculpture of crumpled car bodies dominated the room, there is now a sparkling clean mirror. In the booths, where Cocola’s clientele was hip and cool and tolerant of a strong contingent of corporate office workers, 410’s lunch crowd is the same thing in reverse: predominantly young and corporate, with a strong contingent of hip artists and other fashionable sorts.

One plucks one’s own silverware from a holder on the table--but the do-it-yourself part of the Boyd Street dining experience stops here. Waiters and waitresses, equipped with leather carpenter’s aprons, are attentive, helpful. The menu is posted on the wall, in chalk, on blackboards. The categories are: small plates, sandwiches, full plates.

Small plates include appetizers, soup and appetizer-sized salads. Polenta sticks with blue cheese dressing, the first thing on the menu, are far more fun than healthful; they’re a deep-fried indulgence, a kind of creamy cornmeal french fry gilded in butterfat. (Thank goodness it’s a small plate.) Beer-battered prawns, recommended enthusiastically by two waitpersons, were a rather limp breaded shrimp that were almost, but not quite, redeemed by a lively ginger sauce. Plainer were the peeled U-16s, large shrimp ordered by the piece and served with a horseradish-rich cocktail sauce. A vegetarian quesadilla proved to be a tortilla sandwich of wine-marinated eggplant, red peppers and Jack cheese, with fresh tomato salsa and a daub of sour cream on the side.

The Caesar salad is very good--fresh, well-dressed, clean-tasting. Romaine and butter lettuce make up the mixed greens salad, dressed with “Tara’s Dressing”--Tara is the chef--a balsamic vinaigrette.

“Yesterday’s or Tomorrow’s Soup” is, of course, two soups, made a day apart, each with a lifespan of two days. One day, the tomorrow soup was a potato leek, which we found too salty to eat--a hallmark, of sorts, for potato soup, considering the cure for saltiness in soup is to add a potato. Our waiter graciously replaced tomorrow’s soup with yesterday’s, a delicious cilantro-almond cream soup with a very compelling texture thanks to the finely ground almonds.

A rare roast beef sandwich on a baguette had all the right things--daikon sprouts, horseradish mayonnaise, good roast beef. The grilled mahi-mahi B.L.T. is huge, juicy and delicious. I’ll be back for another one soon. A wonderful cucumber salad accompanies sandwiches.

Full plates include big salads, including an excellent Nicoise and a disappointing smoked salmon with arugula. Not only was the salmon of ordinary quality and the arugula very sparse among the salad greens, the salad itself is one of those presentations that, when placed in front of you, makes you want to sink from sight: You get a crown of sliced fish sprouting greenery. Too, too silly.

Tara’s pasta of the day, on one day, was a hearty and delicious plate of penne with goat cheese, cilantro and sun-dried tomatoes. Grilled shrimp wrapped in prosciutto and basil had potential, but tasted far too strongly of alcohol, presumably from a marinade.

So far, the kitchen is open from 9 a.m. to just 7:30 p.m. On Thursday and Friday nights, the bar stays open until 11 p.m. With such diverse, fresh food at such reasonable prices, the place should extend its hours soon--at least to include Saturday night. If this product of ‘80s trends is the status quo of the ‘90s, we can safely say that the food revolution has been won.

* 410 Boyd Street, 410 Boyd St., Los Angeles, (213) 617-2491. Lunch and early dinner Monday through Friday. Full Bar. MasterCard, Visa accepted. Lunch or dinner for two, food only, $16 to $45.