RESTAURANTS : Mistral: A New and True Bistro That Has It All

The bistro! But of course! Dark wood and beveled mirrors, chandeliers and haze, rough red wine, soup a l’oignon and the caffeine-jacked mutterings of stubbly intellectuals who smoke stinky Gauloises and will nurse two fingers of suze-cassis until long after you’ve gone home to bed.

Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Francois Revel, Scott and Ford and Hem--everybody is there, including pie-eyed couples from Dayton and Whittier who hunker over plates of grilled liver (the exchange rate, natch) and soak up all those groovy vicarious French vibes with glasses of cheap Bordeaux .

Experts have been predicting an American bistro boom for as long as I can remember. Unfortunately, like Beaujolais Nouveau, the institution doesn’t travel particularly well--many of the originals in Paris have shut down.

Spago and the West Beach Cafe are as casual and a la mode as anything on the Left Bank, but their style is too specifically Californian to qualify them as true bistros. Such pretenders to the genre as Cutters, Kate Mantilini and, well, the Bistro, barely rate mention, while Le Chardonnay on Melrose, a replica of a Belle Epoque brasserie on the Boulevard St. Germain, certainly looks the part, and even serves a few of the requisite dishes, but is too calculated and far too expensive to be much more than a sedate special-occasion restaurant. A good bistro should be at least as accessible as it is chic.

We all expect the same things at these places, Piaf and Pernod, crowds and brimming boatloads of les geegaws Francaises. Mistral, a superb new bistro in the Sherman Oaks space formerly occupied by the dreadful Albion’s, is the first local to have it all: high-Deco mirrors and sconces; a huggable ginflower-nosed French maitre d’ who will remember your name; cute, though world-weary, waitresses in aprons and tight skirts; tart, perfect kir; wonderful food and a tiny, familiar menu--salad Nicoise, steak frites, chocolate mousse. The long, high-ceilinged dining room is paneled with wood mellow as a violin back, and softly glows with mirrors.

You might, of course, start off with a crock of archetypically Parisian onion soup, rich, dark and served under a layer of bread and melted Gruyere cheese whose nuttiness accentuates the subtle sweetness of the broth, a husky Gerard Depardieu of an onion soup. The specials change from day to day, but the splendid mussel appetizer is often available--a dozen fresh, sweet, small specimens that have been baked on the half shell under a powerful, green crust of parsley and chopped garlic. There might be delicate little chicken sausages, which circle a pale-yellow, mustard-tinged sauce, or possibly a trio of elegant pates.

Mistral makes a specialty of Provencal “pizza” with tomato and cheese or mounded with seafood, and the restaurant’s pissaladiere is startling for the absolute rightness of its clean, strong flavors: sweet onions cooked until they are nearly caramelized, fat filets of anchovy; pungent, wrinkled olives; a wheaty, paper-thin crust that is flexible and crisp as matzoh both--when it comes to pizza, Mistral must be ranked with Spago, Caioti and Angeli as one of Los Angeles’ best. If you are offered a special of firm tagiatelle noodles tossed with a bright-green coulis of asparagus and cream, do not hesitate; it is among the tastiest bowlfuls of pasta conceivable in the spring.

Fish is an iffy thing here: One time, monkfish filets sauteed with lemon and garlic were crusty and moist, and the next time soggy-crusted and dry; the whitefish with Meaux mustard was vividly flavored one day and bland the next; trout has been mushy.

But the small, juicy strip steak at Mistral, butter-soft and grilled properly black-and-blue (if that’s how you ordered it), is exemplary, crowned with melting garlic butter, shot through with fines herbes, and flanked by a heap of crisp, thin pomme frites and a salad of baby lettuces. Well-seasoned steak tartare, cool and unctuous, is nearly as good; when they have it, the garlicky rack of lamb is tender, just gamy enough and served with a stack of stupendous hot potato chips oozing garlic and oil.

Desserts are the usual bistro sorts of things, good marshmallow-textured floating islands on seas of caramel, numbing chocolate mousses, and fresh fruit tarts.

Mistral, 13422 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks, (818) 981-6650. Dinner only Tuesdays through Sundays. Full bar. Valet parking. All major credit cards accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $25-45. Selected prices: Appetizer: onion soup au gratin $4.50 ; pissaladiere, $6.50; pasta with chives, pine nuts and cream, $7.50; steak frites, $16 ; floating island, $4.