Bel-Air Bar & Grill--Just What the Neighborhood Ordered

The new Bel-Air Bar & Grill is a neighborhood place in a neighborhood that doesn’t have many restaurants. Just north of Sunset at Moraga Drive (and incidentally, very handy if you’re visiting the Getty), it’s a good place to grab a burger (topped with either jack or sharp Cheddar), a spinach salad and a plate of California-style pasta or grilled fish. If the menu sounds awfully familiar, it’s because it is. The chef is Robert Lia, who last cooked at the ever-popular 72 Market Street Oyster Bar & Grill in Venice. Lia also helped write that restaurant’s new cookbook.

The space is a pleasant ranch-style house with tall ceilings and exposed brick walls and, in one room, a working fireplace. This is California, after all, so the owners have added a brick patio, too, where gurgling fountains mask the sound of the 405’s roar.

To start, there’s a hearty barley soup with accents of celery--or a cream of parsnip with ginger. Hello, parsnip! That’s a vegetable you don’t see around town much. Beer-battered calamari are OK, but a porcini and oyster mushroom risotto (embellished with truffle oil) is gummy and a special (meager) lobster salad tastes as if it had been sitting in the refrigerator for hours. My New York steak is decent enough, though, served with a baked potato and a refreshing jicama slaw. With entrees like grilled pork tenderloin and wild rice or grilled marinated chicken breast with fennel ratatouille, Lia’s menu plays it safe, very safe.

The local crowd seems to be enjoying the idea of going out to dinner with friends. In the neighborhood. And making full use of that full bar. Whether the restaurant will become a destination for the rest of L.A. remains to be seen.

But there is the Getty just up the way. And soon, if you have lunch at Bel-Air Bar & Grill, you can forget the bus, the bicycle or the grueling hike and step aboard the restaurant’s shuttle, which will whisk you, depending on availability, up to the hilltop museum. Plus, you’ll have already eaten, so you won’t have to stand in line for that, at least.

BE THERE

Bel-Air Bar & Grill, 662 N. Sepulveda Blvd., Bel-Air. (310) 440-5544. Open for lunch and dinner daily. Major credit cards accepted. Valet parking. Dinner appetizers $9 to $13; pastas $9 to $14; sandwiches $8.25 to $10.50; main courses $10 to $19.