Still Waiting After All These Years : The Hard Rock Cafe may no longer attract the coolest of the cool, but its long lines live on

Nobody goes there anymore--it’s too crowded. --Yogi Berra

When Bret Easton Ellis’ novel “Less Than Zero” first came out, it was useful as a sort of Audubon guide to the exotic fauna inhabiting the Hard Rock Cafe’s bar. Somebody had to be buying all those expensive poodle skirts at Flip. I’m pretty sure Rob, Sean and Emilio have since found cooler places to hang out, and some critics already consider Ellis a has-been at age 24, but the Hard Rock still draws an awesome crowd.

At 7:45 p.m. on a chilly night, the line outside the Beverly Center already spills around the corner. Half a dozen taxicabs wait a few feet away, ready to cart off anybody giddy from too many Long Island Ice Teas, and with nearly the regularity of trams in the Disneyland parking lot, rented Mustangs pull up to the curb and disgorge young men in Porsche jackets and tight jeans. A blond woman whistles at one, then yabbers in Swedish to her girlfriend.

A cute teen-age girl tries to talk her way past the doorman just as she would at Heartbreak. “Get real,” she says. “I just want to see if Francesca is inside.”

As I approach the rope, eight Cub Scouts and a den mother sneak into line in front of me. The doorman ogles my babe, and somebody asks me if I’ve ever been to the Hard Rock in Helsinki. I don’t smoke, but suddenly I need a cigarette very, very badly.

As a social institution, the Hard Rock Cafe probably ranks somewhere between MTV and junior high school; as a restaurant, between McDonald’s and Morton’s; as a cheap date, between El Coyote and a spot on the guest list at the Roxy.

The place is the ‘50s as told to people born in the ‘70s, rootsy Americana recast to British specifications and imported the same way the Beatles sold rootsy American R&B; back to us 25 years ago. (In the last few decades, the U.K. has kind of been to American culture what Japan has been to American technology.)

Hamburgers taste like hamburgers here, fries like fries; generic early ‘80s new wave blasts loud enough to drown out the endless choruses of “Happy Birthday.” Founded in ’71 London, the international chain anticipated “American Graffiti” and “Happy Days” by several years, Johnny Rockets and Ed Debevic’s by more than a decade. An “American” restaurant now seems authentic only to the extent it resembles the Hard Rock--loud rock ‘n’ roll, corny gimcracks on the walls, gum-cracking waitresses in white uniforms--and a meal at the Hard Rock is in some ways the youth-culture equivalent of a visit to Plymouth Rock. Of course, it’s easier to scam a date here.

The den mother rushes past me to the bar, which is packed five-deep. “Sex on the Beach, straight,” she says to the bartender, who mixes the drink without cracking a smile. A busboy steps on my foot. Elapsed time spent outside in line: about half an hour; elapsed time spent wandering around the bar waiting for a table: 45 minutes, just enough time for the five of us to drain two bottles of Hard Rock Red.

The hostess finally calls our party, and we circle past Elton John’s sequined Dodger uniform, past the thronged Hard Rock concession stand, and over to a beckoning waitress who stands by a display case containing the actual guitar David Bowie pretended to play in “Absolute Beginners.”

“Oh,” she says, disappointed, “I thought you were a deuce.” She vanishes, and we watch a man who looks a little like Judd Nelson eat a big bowl of salad.

We finally get a table, over near a parked Harley-Davidson. We order--we’ve gotten pretty hungry after the wait--and the waitress can’t stop giggling about how much food we’re getting. After I hand her the menus, she leans over conspiratorially and whispers in my ear, “You all got high or something before coming here, didn’t you?”

“No,” I say, “I’m a restaurant critic and I’m reviewing this meal for the Los Angeles Times.” She squeezes my shoulder. “Sure you are, honey,” she says. “Can I bring you a beer?”

The food, more or less besides the point here, is basically competently prepared coffee shop fare; fresh, abundant and fairly priced. Appetizer portions really are massive, meant for two at least. There’s a hillock of greasy onion rings; a baseball-size mound of bland, cool guacamole that comes with prefab-tasting chips and nice, chunky salsa; and a big platter of chicken wings (only $2.95!) that are fiery with burnt spice. A huge bowl of chili, meaty like Chasen’s with a bit more heat, is excellent when adulterated with chopped onion and grated cheese. And a mammoth chopped salad, chockablock with smoked turkey, blue cheese and bacon, is fine.

The waitress comes over and asks if everything is all right. (I think she expects us to have burst like poorly made sausages.) She giggles, wheels on one foot and gives a deep, wet kiss to a man seated behind her at the bar, all in one easy motion. She coquettishly lifts a leg in the air and giggles once more, which is something you could go to Spago every day for a month and not see.

I ate almost half of a grilled ahi tuna sandwich before I realized it wasn’t the grilled chicken breast sandwich I had ordered--a dense, whole-wheat bun will do that to you sometimes.

The vaunted lime-grilled chicken reminded me of the rotisserie birds that twirl endlessly in supermarkets. But you know what to expect from all-American grill cuisine: smoky burgers on dense whole-wheat buns; grilled New York strip steaks that come medium-rare when you order them medium-rare; watermelon-basted baby-back ribs that are about as good as the Polynesian-tasting variety gets; moist grilled swordfish; a club sandwich.

Have dessert somewhere else: The strawberries on the shortcake, while obviously fresh, somehow tasted frozen. The apple pie was quite dry; not so the line--dozens of people shivered in the rain as we left. A Hard Rock Cafe letterman’s jacket ($160) is less waterproof than it looks.

Hard Rock Cafe, 8600 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles, (213) 276-7605. Open daily, 11:30 a.m.-midnight. Valet parking. Full bar. MasterCard and Visa accepted. No reservations accepted. Recommended dishes: chili, $2.95; watermelon ribs, $9.95; hamburger, $5.75.