RESTAURANTS : BIRTHPLACE OF THE COOL

It’s a summer night at the tail end of a withering heat wave, but when I arrive hot and hungry at Michael’s, the main dining room is deserted. It doesn’t take long to figure out why: Everybody has retreated to the garden. Seated beneath a canopy of trees, close to the soothing splash of the waterfall, I’m feeling better, much better. High above, the canvas roof is furled back to expose the sky. The breeze carries the scent of flowering jasmine. At this moment, there is nowhere else I’d rather be.

When Michael McCarty first opened his Santa Monica restaurant 16 years ago, it was a sensation. Here was a brash young kid--all of 25 then--who turned fine dining in this town on its head. He and his team (including Ken Frank, Jonathan Waxman, Mark Peel and Nancy Silverton at one time or another) had the technique and the audacity to usher in a new kind of restaurant and a new kind of cuisine. It was informal. It was fun. And it had a state-of-the-art wine list.

The menu today reads like a textbook on what’s come to be known as California cuisine. After all, along with Chez Panisse in Berkeley, Michael’s pioneered this style of cooking. But while other restaurants took it to extremes, Michael’s has kept a steady course. Especially in the past month, when McCarty has put his energy back into his namesake restaurants here and in New York instead of costly outside projects. And though he’s older now, he’s still got enthusiasm to burn. Hair slicked back, voice booming, working the room, McCarty is irrepressible and completely charming.

When I debate whether to start with a special of prosciutto and melon, he enthuses: “We’ve got the most fabulous melons from the Santa Monica farmers market. They’re something like French Charentais.” How can I resist? A lush fragrance wafts up from the plate. The honey-blond wedges are bursting with juice, draped with velvety prosciutto di Parma : an absolutely perfect version of this archetypal summer first course.

The rest of Michael’s extensive menu consist of equally terrific, unfussy dishes. Sweet corn chowder laced with milky corn kernels and cilantro and topped with a dollop of thick creme frai^che. Satiny gravlax and tender toasted brioche. A spectacular summer seafood broth shocked with cilantro and chiles and swimming with clams and mussels, sweet bay scallops and rosy shrimp.

Nobody does composed salads better. There’s Maine lobster with ma^che, grilled sweet onions and perfectly ripe avocado, a study in balance and restraint. Or sauteed fresh shiitake and tree mushrooms from Oregon, strewn with chunky lardons of pancetta and pine nuts and tossed with sherry wine vinegar, walnut oil and baby greens.

Everybody makes pizzas. But not like these. The crust, ideally poised between bready and cracker-thin, is good enough to eat on its own. My favorite topping is a mix of good fontina and mozzarella, embedded with sliced shiitake and oyster mushrooms and fresh thyme. Like the handsome composition of tans and brown and cream, the way these flavors work together is exceptional.

Some of the best dishes are as simple as can be: lightly sauteed sweetbreads with parsley butter and big Spanish capers; grilled striped bass with a salsa of fresh mango and sweet onion; the New York steak, dry-aged and almost gamey, which beats most of the steaks in town.

And for dessert, there’s a warm compote of white peaches and hefty blackberries with vanilla bean ice cream and peach ice or a flourless chocolate cake garnished with strawberry sorbet and ice cream and pointy little fraise des bois , or wild strawberries. But I can’t resist “les five sorbets”: oval scoops of exquisite ices in flavors such as white peach, blackberry-lime and apricot suggest the very essence of these summer fruits.

Occasionally, however, there’s a dish that just misses. Marvelous handmade fettuccine with wild mushrooms and asparagus is drowned in an impossibly rich Chardonnay cream sauce. A heavy hand with the cream mars an otherwise appealing chilled cucumber soup. Blue crab and shiitake ravioli are tough.

Michael’s menu lists the provenance of just about everything (New Jersey pancetta , Watsonville curly endive, Carpinteria squab, La Jolla striped bass), sometimes to comic effect. A diner one night couldn’t help asking, “Who’s Guss?” referring to the Guss pork tenderloin and Guss lamb chops. “That’s Guss!” laughed McCarty, pointing to a bearded gentleman at the next table who happens to be one of the restaurant’s meat purveyors and who was just then squirting lemon over his Fanny Bay oysters (which hail from the Pacific Northwest). After that, of course, I had to order the bone-in lamb chops. Served with an enormous mound of skinny frites , they are fabulous.

All the fuss about ingredients may seem old hat, but McCarty is not just talking about the difference great raw materials make. He’s really using them. And whether it’s a simple dish or something complicated, the quality of the basic ingredients shines through.

The exemplary wine list is the work of Phillip Reich. When most serious wine lists were printed on expensive paper and revised only once or twice a year, it was his idea to put it on a computer, so it could be updated frequently. And Reich’s list goes on for pages, offering wines from California’s up-and-coming producers as well as French wines from little-known regions.

But above all, Michael McCarty’s back and it shows: The kitchen is juiced up, the service crisp and the food consistently good. The prices aren’t nearly as scary as they once were either. After 16 years, it’s easy to take Michael’s for granted. Don’t. Because there’s no time like the present to rediscover classic California cuisine.

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MICHAEL’S CUISINE: California. AMBIENCE: Walls covered with art, spare good looks and a secluded garden for summer dining. BEST DISHES: prosciutto and melon, shiitake and oyster mushroom pizza, summer seafood broth, lamb Porterhouse chops, “les five sorbets.” WINE PICKS: 1993 Dauvissat-Camus Chablis La Forest, 1992 Philip Togni Sauvignon Blanc, 1991 Corison Cabernet Sauvignon. FACTS: 1147 3rd St., Santa Monica; (310) 451-0843. Closed Sunday, Monday and Saturday lunch. Dinner for two, food only, $69 to $109. Corkage $10. Valet parking.