RESTAURANT REVIEW : Not Your Average Tandoor

The Clay Pit features the handsomest parking-lot dining in town. So what if the name makes you think of mud wrestling?

Actually, of course, the name refers to the Indian tandoor oven, since a tandoor is basically a huge clay jar buried in the ground. Still, this is not just any old clay oven; it’s mesquite-fired. In other words, the Clay Pit is one Indian restaurant that realizes it’s living in L.A. in the ‘90s and not London in the ‘50s. It has style.

Take that parking-lot business. The restaurant is located in the handsome Spanish Baroque structure known as Chapman Market, and it does have indoor dining, though the room feels faintly cramped. However, it has the good fortune to front the patiolike parking lot that forms the center of Chapman Market, so it puts some tables out there.

The lot itself is gorgeously paved in octagonal brick, with darker bricks subtly indicating the diagonal parking stalls--you almost feel guilty driving into this serene, elegant space. Wrought-iron fences of a faintly Cubist air, matching the black metal chairs, separate the parking from the dining areas. The result is a positive Design Experience, handsome by daylight and soothing at night.

The food is not quite so unusual, but it has style too. Among the appetizers are solid, pyramidal vegetable samosas and mesquite-broiled chicken wings, worth ordering if that’s really what you want. Better are the paneer pakoras , where the squares of Indian cheese deep-fried in garbanzo batter include a filling of hottish green peppers.

Best of all is the appetizer called reshmi chicken. You only get four pieces of chicken breast for $6.50, but they are incredibly good: moist, tender, practically fluffy in texture and with a great salty-smoky flavor. There’s a tandoori chicken salad consisting of the same wonderful chicken mixed with mushrooms and iceberg lettuce, served with two dressings: mild yogurt and a sharper yogurt-Italian dressing loud with oregano.

The entrees are neatly divided into traditional categories: tandoori grills, staggeringly rich Moghulesque stews and simple vegetable dishes such as garbanzos in a mild tomato sauce. The grills, of which there are about 10, are quite good. The chicken tikka kebab , for instance, is the ideal version of smoky back-yard barbecue chicken. Kofta kebab is very finely ground lamb--practically a paste--heavily seasoned with cumin and mild pepper and formed on a skewer like a skinless sausage.

The Moghul stews don’t include any that answer to unfamiliar names, but they are all impressively rich and subtle. Chicken makhani comes in a sauce with a little tomato sweetness, masala prawns in a sweeter tomato sauce, chicken sagwalla with long-cooked spinach and mass quantities of butter. The lamb in the roghan josh , unfortunately, is not quite cooked to pieces in the traditional manner.

Where there is a tandoor , there are lots of breads. Not only garlic nan and onion kulcha , which has a comforting filling of onion for the cold weather, but a version of Kabuli nan with yellow raisins and maraschino cherries as well as bits of pistachio and cashew. Everything you order comes with a traditional hot-bitter cilantro chutney and wonderful sweet-sour raisin chutney, loaded with cumin. They ought to bottle the stuff.

The desserts are the usual Indian sweets based on milk cooked down to various thicknesses. The thickest is the “milk balls” in syrup scented with the exotic spice kewra , but there’s also a thick cream called malai . The best way to try it is in rasmalai , a patty of sweetened cream cheese floating in cream, but there’s also a flavorful rice pudding ( khir ) full of it.

Of course, the menu says the rice pudding is flavored with saffron, and if there’s saffron in this khir I’m a monkey’s guru. And where is that mud wrestling, anyway?

The Clay Pit, 3465 West 6th St., No. 110, Los Angeles, (213) 382-6300. Lunch 11:30 a.m.-3:30 p.m. daily; dinner 5:30-10 p.m. daily. Beer and wine. Parking in Chapman Market. American Express, Discover, MasterCard and Visa accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $23-$43.