SERVICE, DINNER BOTH ARE HIT-OR-MISS AFFAIRS

One thing that separates humans from other beasts is the ability to adapt tools for personal use. Who can forget that scene in “2001” in which it dawns on the hairy ape that a bone might be used as a weapon?

The other night at dinner at 1000 Wilshire, a new California cuisine palace all done up in aqua and peach floral prints, I witnessed a another man-meets-tool epiphany. Here was the busboy, clearing our dishes, and here was the problem: a bread plate just out of reach. Quickly, he assessed the situation. He could reach for it, expending a lot of energy. He could ask someone to pass him the plate, something the management may have instructed him not to do. Then, an idea struck. He took a dinner fork, speared the rim of the plate and pulled it across the tablecloth to within easy reach.

Brilliant. But now came another problem: What to do with the leftover rolls, which prevented him from stacking the dishes (something everybody’s mother except his said never to do). After some hesitation, he took the rolls off the plates and plopped them on the table, stacked the dishes neatly, retrieved the rolls and was gone.

I don’t like to think of myself as a person who picks on busboys, even one with techniques like these. It’s just that his improvisational behavior was indicative of a general discombobulation in this restaurant.

Servers seemed to come in casts of thousands, waiters running around in shirt sleeves, showing up at odd times, always a different face, one taking a drink order, another bringing it, someone else announcing the specials, taking our orders, bringing the food, so that none of them ever seemed to know who got what and no one offered a wine list--probably thinking someone else had done it.

There were advantages, however. Once, instead of the watercress scallop soup we’d ordered, we were brought a tomato bisque that belonged to another table, and it was absolutely wonderful tomato soup--just this side of too hot, the way I like soup.

The watercress soup, when it arrived, wasn’t bad either, although the fat white scallop sitting in it seemed strangely out of place, like a golf ball in a swamp.

Dinner, like the service, proved to be a hit-or-miss proposition. The Petaluma free range chicken was so tough and rubbery it was as if they’d allowed the creature to walk down to L.A. all by himself, only to be undergrilled; the salad of roasted peppers, grilled onions and broiled goat cheese had no detectable dressing; the tagliatelle with lamb fennel sausage was a greasy mass; and risotto buried under a generous number of those fat scallops, shrimp and mussels had the texture of something used to hold bricks.

But some things were just fine. The spaghettini puttanesca was full of too much garlic, too many olives, capers, anchovies and chiles, and was therefore intense and delicious; the bufala mozzarella, in a salad of mixed young greens, tomatoes, basil, sundried tomatoes and cracked pepper, was some of the best in town (although one waiter forgot to bring olive oil to dress it and another stranger finally arrived with it after we’d flagged a third one down). There was, one night, a wonderfully fresh slab of blackened swordfish in a hot red pepper sauce, served with a very nice little roasted potato and crisp baby squash. But also, unfortunately, the orange roughy was in a mawkishly sweet sauce, the sort of concoction one reviewer has dubbed “dessert fish.”

Dishes intended as desserts fared better and disappeared fast--a pudding-like creme brulee, strewn with nice ripe raspberries; and a lavish-looking thing--white chocolate ice cream in a spun sugar tulip, resting on a pool of tart raspberry sauce with the word tulipe written in cream in the sauce, in case you’d forgotten what you’d ordered.

I have no doubt that it’s possible to go to this plush and comfortable restaurant, strike it lucky and have a perfectly relaxing, satisfying meal. Plenty of people seem to be crowding in--you can’t get near the place on a Saturday night. And the menu has every imaginable 1987 buzzword, from spaghettini with grilled squab and port to roast lamb and rosemary to smoked quail salad to carpaccio. Don’t expect to try the spicy veal Sichuan risotto, those of you perverse enough to order such a thing. It’s on the menu, but they no longer serve it. Seems the chef just couldn’t seem to make what sounded to him like a bright idea work.

1000 Wilshire , 1000 Wilshire Blvd., Santa Monica. (213) 395-6003. Open for dinner every night. Starting March 2 it will be open for lunch. Full bar. Valet parking. All major credit cards. Dinner for two, food only, $35 to $70.