WANNA GO TO A PARTY AT THE KLOSTERMANS?

The Duke, 469 N. Doheny Drive, Beverly Hills, (213) 273-3844. Open Monday-Friday for lunch, daily for dinner. Full bar. Valet parking. American Express, MasterCard and Visa accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $30-$70.

Rich women once wanted to own diamonds and furs; today, it seems, they want restaurants. Preferably intimate ones, where their friends can feel at home.

This approach has its problems. The owner is apt to get cross when the guests aren’t feeling friendly. She is likely to pout when they’re not prepared to party. And having made her “home” theirs, she takes it to heart when they fail to eat the food.

Luciana Klosterman should know better. The Italian-born wife of former pro football executive Don Klosterman was a partner in Il Giardino when it opened four years ago. But the woman, who is described in the press release for the Duke as “impossibly beautiful and charming,” had a dream. She wanted to open a small and personal restaurant.

And so Klosterman took over one of the tiniest restaurants in town (the former Scully’s), redecorated it with that personal touch (masculine clutter gave way to feminine furbelows) and named it after her husband, whose nickname is Duke. She then installed Paquita Orihuela, the family cook (and her children’s former nanny), in the kitchen. It’s all very homey.

The food does have a homey quality--even the menu has an oddly amateur charm. Among the appetizers are the sort of soups you rarely find in new restaurants. One night there was gazpacho; on another, vichyssoise. Both tasted as if the recipes had been clipped straight out of McCall’s or Ladies Home Journal. But the menu also includes that quintessential dish of the mid-’80s, the super-trendy carpaccio . This one came blanketed in chopped lettuce and cheese; the waiter looked startled when we asked if we might have a little olive oil to put on top. (Thus adorned, it was a delicious dish.) There is also salad and the possibility of pasta.

The pasta dishes tend to be the kinds of things you might make for yourself at home. Like an uncomplicated white clam sauce ladled over spaghetti or pasta al pesto or what they call spaghetti all bandiera , which comes in the colors of the Italian flag--red tomatoes and dried peppers, green parsley, white garlic (lots of it) and cheese. It is an appealing dish. More appealing, certainly, than the penne mixed with very dull sausage.

Entrees are not significantly more complex. My favorite among them was salmon served in a light saffron cream sauce and surrounded by a circle of spinach. Halibut was cooked in much the same manner, the fish in its spinach circle covered with a plain cream sauce. This last was such a comfortingly cozy dish that it reminded me of very refined nursery food. I also liked veal Milanese, which looked like a giant Ping-Pong paddle: the huge flat, crisply fried and virtually greaseless circle of meat was still attached to its bone, which was conveniently wrapped up in aluminium foil for easier eating. Take my advice and skip the steak.

The press release speaks glowingly of warm apple fritters; unfortunately, on the three nights that I dined at the Duke, they were unavailable. The rubbery creme caramel was little consolation, and a very sweet chocolate cake was even less.

But the food here is not the real draw; the clue to the menu is what you find written in bold script across the top. “The Duke,” it says succinctly, “is a party.” And Luciana Klosterman is a serious party giver. Why else would she cram an electric keyboard, a microphone, speakers and a singer into an already overcrowded space? We dreaded the start of the music. And with good reason.

Conversations turned into shouting matches. This did not seem to perturb Klosterman.

She strolled elegantly around the room snapping her fingers and looking impossibly beautiful. She pulled chairs up to tables all around the room and made herself at home. She looked seriously put out when we asked when the music would end. “I don’t know what is going on tonight,” she said grumpily, “Everybody is complaining. Usually they just get up and dance.” With that she whirled away, leaving us with the distinct feeling that we were being very bad guests.

In fact I get that guilty sensation every time I dine at the Duke; I keep feeling that I am letting Klosterman down. There she is, being the perfect hostess, circulating among her guests to make them feel at home. And there I am wishing she would go away.

Many people, I am sure, are thrilled by this personal touch. Although the room is filled with what are obviously old friends (many of them genuine celebrities), Klosterman clearly intends to befriend everybody who walks through her door. But grumps like me can’t help feeling that this is even worse than waiters who insist on telling you their names.