RESTAURANTS : FROM A GREAT SITE TO SO-SO FOOD

The success of a restaurant is often alchemical, and sometimes a great mystery. Although Ocean Avenue Seafood has been open only two months, the house is already packed. Is it the location? The ambiance? The food? Or a combination of the three?

The location is glorious--right across from the picture-post card Palisades Park. You might imagine you were in Honolulu, or straight away in Nice. It is easy to feel you’re on vacation just sitting on the outdoor terrace banked with potted flowers and trees. There are large umbrellas, starched white linens, nattily outfitted waiters--and all that Mediterranean light.

Choose your scene: the elegant jewel-colored interior, the counter (great if you’re eating alone), the outdoor terrace or the bar. The bar, which snakes its way from inside to out, changes from New York modish, all woody and intense, to aquamarine tile outside. Caveat emptor: It’s noisy wherever you sit.

It’s very easy to be beguiled by such a pretty restaurant. J. D. Salinger might have called Ocean Avenue Seafood “unimpeachably right-looking.” It’s the kind of place that makes you think you’re having a good time. Those plates passing by are all decorous, the wine list’s expansive, service is entirely smooth. And the bread--that clue of clues--is an enormous slab of freshest sourdough.

So when you realize that the food really isn’t very good, it comes as a certain letdown. By the time you’ve ingested the first course, you’re no longer conjuring Honolulu or Nice. It’s the Catskills that come to mind. Oh, everything is fresh all right, and the portions are quite grand, but nothing’s subtle or first rate. In Borscht Belt style, the menu is newly printed every day, and what a list it is! Chincoteague oysters, Morro Bay abalone, Baquetta sea bass, Hawaiian opakapaka, and on and on. . . . Danny Kaye might have done a splendid vocal rendition of it. But he would have liked its sounds much more than its tastes.

Steamed little neck clams came in an unbearably salty white wine, shallots and herb broth. Gummy broiled stuffed mushrooms were drowning in a butter pool. The dressing on a large, pretty Caesar salad came in stages (oil, cheese, then--wham!--garlic) instead of being properly mixed. The namby-pamby, mushy Maryland crab cakes were served with sauces you might find on an airplane tray. Of all the oysters sampled (and we worked our way from Apalachicola to Quilcene), only the Blue Points were A-1.

Ocean Seafood clearly starts out with good ingredients--but its realization might be better realized. A smoked chicken salad with Napa cabbage and thin slices of orange was almost there--but the mango chutney dressing was just too sweet. A very pretty smoked tuna salad came with a fine vinaigrette, a good handful of Roquefort and walnuts, but the nuts and cheese blotted out the tuna--which didn’t seem to be smoked at all, only scantily charred.

The fish--baked, broiled, grilled or sauteed--is the best way to go. The portions are large and served with a pleasing array of vegetables (and with prices hovering in the $17 range). We enjoyed a California yellowtail with a taxi-yellow orange cilantro butter. Grilled swordfish with pale roasted garlic butter was splendid too. Grilled tiger prawns came with an overpowering (but wonderful) plate of andouille sausage and white beans. An orange roughy with a bland mustard caper sauce came with a spanking fresh basil pasta. Fine, full-fleshed jumbo prawns, served with nice little red potatoes, were stuffed with a really awful mix of whipped potato and crabmeat.

The Paella, piled high with shrimp, scallops, both chorizo and fennel sausages, chicken, firm-fleshed white fish, clams and mussels in their shells, is big enough to serve three. But what a disappointment: The rice, which should have been smoky with saffron, seemed to have wandered over from an Italian marinara dish.

The dessert tray is the gorgeous sort filled with sugary delights. A fruit tart with its nice pastry cream came on a leathery crust. Double-decker carrot cake is just too sweet. A hot peach and berry cobbler with a generous portion of ice cream--the best dessert we tasted despite its chicken pot-pie crust--turned out, to our surprise when we got the bill, to be a big, fat $6 dessert.

Ocean Avenue Seafood looks like a Calvin Klein/Ralph Lauren ad come to life, and if ambiance is the most important thing to you, this might be a great place to go (it is fun to be there). But be advised, when it comes to restaurants, looks can be deceiving.

Ocean Avenue Seafood, 1401 Ocean Ave . , Santa Monica, (213) 394-5669. Open daily: lunch 11:30 a.m.-4 p.m., dinner 5-11 p.m. (Friday and Saturday until midnight); reservations suggested. All major credit cards. Full bar. Valet parking. Dinner for two (food only):