Argentine Fare Served Up With Panache

La Casona bills its cuisine as vintage Argentinian-European. Come again?

Actually, much of the food at this Sherman Oaks restaurant is fine, but so far it looks as if the place is going to fly on buzz alone. It hasn’t been open two months, and the bar is already a gathering place for Argentines in red bandannas and Spaniards in black berets. You hear people speaking Italian and even lilting Brazilian Portuguese. And this is a bar that isn’t even permitted to serve alcoholic beverages yet.

Chef Alberto Mourino is a powerful presence. There he is in the kitchen whites, the dashing fellow with a slightly overgrown power pony tail, and whoa, he’s headed over to your table. You might find out without asking that the man is a Cordon Bleu graduate who has opened 14 restaurants. And that he is half Spanish and half Italian, not uncommon in his native Argentina.

Mourino has put together an eclectic, Continental-style menu with a lot of richly sauced pastas and meat dishes, but toward the bottom of the menu is a box listing traditional Argentine items. You can order from this section with gusto. These are, generally speaking, the restaurant’s best dishes.

I should mention that this is quite an attractive place. Until recently it was a jazz club called Carmelo’s, but the new owners have completely redone the premises. Today it resembles a rural Tuscan villa with dark-straw stucco walls and beautiful Italian ceramic chandeliers hanging from a 15-foot ceiling. Vases of fresh orchids are scattered throughout the room.

It really does feel like a casona (“big house�) in terms of comfort and elegance. The best tables are situated just inside the noisy outdoor patio that faces Van Nuys Boulevard--practically al fresco dining without the persistent traffic noises. The worst tables are the ones closest to the bar, where you get a barrage of multilingual conversations and very little fresh air.

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All meals begin with a thick minestrone and hot Italian bread rubbed with garlic. At lunch, that is followed by a complimentary antipasto platter piled with such things as fire-roasted eggplant, stuffed calamari, marinated green peppers, salami, cheese and even escabeche de pollo, cold chopped chicken in a vinegar and herb marinade. Whew.

A few of the pastas are unusual, to say the least. One is linguine pele citrica, which uses linguine as a backdrop for a mondo bizarro cream sauce laced with garlic, green onions and orange and lemon peels, making for a candy-like flavor. Another is fettuccine al pesto rosso, where the basil and pine nut flavor of the sauce is cut by peas, large pieces of dried tomato and more garlic.

The entrees aren’t necessarily what you’d expect, either. Roasted stuffed Chateaubriand--two medallions of filet mignon glazed with a mushroom, carrot and celery gravy--is a fine steak disguised as Yankee pot roast. Roasted salmon is a nice piece of fish in a dill lemon butter sauce you’d expect in Stockholm, rather than Buenos Aires.

There is no such monkeying around with the Argentine stuff, though. Heading the list is the irresistible frittata de papas, something like what they call tortilla espan~ola in Spain but with more emphasis on the potatoes. Imagine a puffy flan full of crisply pan-fried potato wedges.

Matambre casero is beef steak rolled up with hard-boiled eggs and pureed sweet red peppers, sliced through and served cold. If the beef were more tender, this would be a classic. The empanadas de carne, though, are as good a version of this Latin American meat pie as I’ve tasted in the Los Angeles Basin, which is saying quite a bit. These pies, crammed with a chunky beef and olive filling, are baked to order and served piping hot.

The Argentine grilled steak entrana a la parilla is a disappointment, though. This is one tough piece of beef, redeemed only by the wonderful chimichurri salsa, a dense blend of olive oil, green herbs and garlic that is good on just about everything.

For dessert, you can get homemade lemon-lime sorbet, served inside a hollowed-out lemon, or a moist, creamy version of tiramisu, a dessert that evidently shadows Italians clear down to Tierra del Fuego.

DETAILS

* WHAT: La Casona.

* WHERE: 4449 Van Nuys Blvd., Sherman Oaks.

* WHEN: Lunch 11:30 a.m.-3 p.m. Tuesday-Friday; dinner 5:30-11:30 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday.

* HOW MUCH: Dinner for two, food only, $25-$46. Suggested dishes: empanadas de carne, $4.50; frittata de papas, $3.95; roasted salmon, $12.95; roasted stuffed Chateaubriand, $15.95.

* CALL: (818) 783-0111.

* FYI: Tango music on Fridays and Saturdays starting at 8:30 p.m. No alcohol. Parking lot in rear. All major cards.