RESTAURANTS : OF CHEESE AND KAOS : Yemenite Bread, Melted Brie on Fries and Chinese Elixirs: This Is Definitely Not Kansas

There’s no discernible sign out front, just a long blue awning with the restaurant’s Wilshire Boulevard address on it, as if it were some very discreet private club. We know the name of the place, though--Bo Kaos (pronounced Beau Chaos ).

Inside is an attractive bar with a ceiling crisscrossed by wooden ribs, more or less like an overturned ship’s hull. Here, according to a bar-top notice adorned by the image of a sporty, six-armed Siamese temple dancer, a happy hour, featuring jazz, transpires from 5 to 7 p.m.

Besides the usual drinks, the bar dispenses shots of Chinese elixirs: ginseng, astragalus, royal jelly or (supposedly an aphrodisiac) deer’s antler. For $3, somebody will pop open a sealed glass ampul and give you a tiny straw to suck out the contents. The elixirs mostly taste like austere, slightly bitter honey, doubtless teeming with vitality. The specialty of the oyster bar is the Flaming Kolossus--a dozen oysters, half a dozen shrimp, two flaming oyster shooters and any two elixirs of your choice.

Just beyond the bar is the dining room, evocatively decorated with faded (indeed, semi-obliterated) landscape panels that look like antique Chinese screens. At 7:30, two people have the dining room to themselves, but the place fills up all at once, as if the customers had arrived on a bus. By 8:15, there’s not an empty table.

This crowd looks as if it might have hung out at the Flaming Kolossus Club on Melrose Avenue a couple of years ago, now more sophisticated and better dressed but retaining the inimitable Melrose drop-dead air. (The waiters’ fashion tastes, by contrast, run to Rastafarian rags and the long-hair-and-railway-overalls mode of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s.) A faint, seductive air of self-mesmerization hangs over the room, suggesting that the film industry is not a million miles away.

Grazing survives at Bo Kaos. The menu is not divided into appetizers and entrees but into cold and warm dishes, plus a section on grilled foods (viz. burgers and a steak). As the saying goes, you’ll find there are no rules here, just what works for you; with a menu as eclectic as this one, don’t knock yourself out trying to put together a logical meal. Bo Kaos is the only restaurant where I’ve had Thai coconut-chicken soup followed by chicken chili with side orders of Yemenite bread and French fries with melted Brie.

The food falls into four main categories: Mediterranean and Mediterranean-adjacent, East Asian, American and cheese. The last is the most consistently successful. Anything with cheese in it is great at Bo Kaos.

For instance, there’s the vegetarian lasagna, which is filled with broccoli, mushrooms and cheese. The pasta is satiny and the filling satisfyingly plush. The quesadilla, made from whole-wheat tortillas stuffed with cheese and avocado, is a big hit. There’s a great salad garnished with toast topped with melted feta and goat cheese. Bo Kaos pizza carries its weight of eggplant and tomatoes gracefully, thanks to a charming quota of the yellow stuff.

The French fries with melted Brie seem to take a long time coming. Finally a waiter comes over and apologizes. “The guy we sent out for the French fries isn’t back yet,” he says, and he doesn’t seem to be joking. Finally they come, and they’re not bad, if on the salty side.

The Mediterranean and Mediterranean-adjacent dishes on the menu include the most distinctive dish, which the menu calls Yemenite bread--a flaky southern Arabian flat bread like a pizza-sized Indian paratha, covered with eggplant puree and a dollop of garlicky yogurt sauce.

What the menu calls Turkish salad is mostly cucumbers with bitter Kalamata-type olives and blue cheese, and it’s pretty good (cheese again). The decent ratatouille is served with the same homemade potato chips you get at the bar; they may not be fried to order, but they are somewhat more flavorful than store-bought chips.

Also in the Mediterranean mode are thick strips of calamari, heavy on the rosemary, with brown rice and more ratatouille on the side. You can also get the neat French version of a fried ham and cheese sandwich, croque monsieur , made with very flavorful, salty ham and accompanied by a plateful of blond fries.

The East Asian dishes run to sweet flavors, not a problem unless you’re really hungry (and if you are, why did you come to a grazing joint?) The peanut dipping sauce that comes with the chicken and shrimp satay, for instance, is so sweet it must be mixed with Chinese plum sauce. The Thai coconut-chicken soup is easy to take--very heavy on the coconut flavor. The pleasantly crisp shrimp spring roll comes with a bizarre sauce that seems to be diluted vinegar mixed with dried mint.

The American list is shortest. You can get chili beans here, and chili beans are exactly what they are--this is emphatically a vegetarian chili, even though you can order chicken added to it.

Two desserts stand out from the crowd: the chocolate mousse--strong on cocoa flavor and not over-sweetened--and a wonderful creme brulee with a butterscotch flavor. The others are mostly pastries, though one night the special was a poached pear with ice cream and chocolate sauce.

The menu doesn’t give a price for the special desserts. Or rather, it says “market price,” as if the desserts were the catch of the day. This seems appropriate, as the kitchen sometimes has a hard time rounding up all the desserts you order. Two of our desserts never do show up.

Where have they gone? Why does that temple dancer have six arms? And while I’m at it, what were we supposed to guess about Guess Jeans? These are imponderable times, when desserts run wild and the nation’s youth takes to elixirs. It’s the Bo Kaos age.

Bo Kaos, 8689 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills; (310) 659-1200. Open nightly for dinner. Full bar. Valet parking. All major credit cards. Dinner for two, $30-$60.