All Decked Out

Dining outside, preferably among friends, is one of life’s simplest and greatest pleasures. It is just one of the many reasons so many of us love living in Southern California.

Technically, the climate is suited to outdoor dining most of the year, but the Valley has breezy, desert-like summers, and our cool, fragrant evenings make the prospect hard to resist right about now.

A wide range of places serve outdoors, and hopefully the five described here reflect the diversity well.

Inn of the Seventh Ray, Piacere and Teru Sushi--the only sushi restaurant with an outdoor patio--deserve mention, but didn’t make the final cut. I’ve spent the last few weeks on sculpted terraces, mall patios and stony balconies, all of which has led me to one unshakable conclusion: Food tastes better when the roof comes off.

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Saddle Peak Lodge

It is the end of a long, bad Friday, and four of us are unwinding with hand-shaken martinis on the outdoor patio of the legendary roadhouse, once an actual hunting lodge. The sun is receding gently behind the Santa Monica Mountains. A refreshing draft of air wafts by, signaling us that an evening chill is not far behind.

Suddenly, a waitress interrupts our reverie with her carefully memorized litany of specials: rabbit roulade, farm-raised sturgeon, venison from a special purveyor. Never mind that in such a magnificent setting we would have been satisfied with oatmeal, Whoppers and frozen yogurt. Second-generation chef Josie La Balch keeps her clientele coming back with rustic game, imaginative appetizers and gorgeous desserts.

The restaurant’s patio of 15-plus tables isn’t always used. When it is, there is no more impressive dining spot in the county. Saddle Peak Lodge is halfway between the Malibu coast and the 101 Freeway in a remote canyon. Evenings are spectacular, and when it isn’t too hot on Sunday, the patio is opened for brunch.

Some of what we eat borders on the superb, but the night air is so seductive our meal is upstaged anyway. Appetizers we sample include a delicious salmon carpaccio, elegant shiitake mushrooms in cream sauce, smoky roast quail wrapped in thick country bacon, and a rough and tumble buffalo-and-venison pate.

Entrees are downright sumptuous. We eschew the kangaroo, which our waitress says to order if we want the strangest thing on the menu. One of us, though, is smart enough to order Millbrook venison, which manages to be tender and gamy at the same time, no mean feat for meat.

A fine filet of sturgeon comes on a bed of mashed potato laced with morels and asparagus. Even the menu’s most mundane-sounding dish, Kick-Ass Chili, turns out a winner--thick, meaty stuff made from high-class beef and the aromas of the Southwest.

Also worth noting is a wonderful creme bru^lee, the all-California wine list and the efficient, friendly staff. We depart thoroughly sated and spent, literally. Saddle Peak Lodge is pricier than all but the most expensive Westside restaurants. But none among us can deny that the experience has been worth every penny.

* 419 Cold Canyon Road, near Calabasas. (818) 222-3888.

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La Pergola

My fondest dining memories of Italy include Florentine steak on a Tuscan hillside, homemade tagliatelle on a Piedmont terrazzo and a morning espresso in full view of the Piazza Espagna in Rome. It is a mystery to me that so few of our Italian restaurants serve outdoors.

One that does is La Pergola, which is also one of the Valley’s prettiest places to dine on the inside. The beautiful dining room has a beamed ceiling, an abundance of fresh flowers and a pletora of beautifully decorated platters and vases, with pottery also obtainable at a small gift shop next door.

Owner Tino Pettignano has cultivated a 6,000-square-foot garden adjacent to the restaurant, where he grows the sweet basil, peppers, zucchini blossoms and white peaches he weaves into his menu. Many appetizers revel in Tino’s organic produce.

Zucchini flowers come three to an order, stuffed with a tempting mixture of fresh spinach and mascarpone cheese. Involtini di melanzane--roasted eggplants rolled with fontina and prosciutto--are also from the garden, with a flavorful, earthy scent.

The exotic ravioli del giardino is the best pasta, a big plate of ravioli stuffed with a puree of zucchini flowers, butternut squash, white eggplant and yellow peppers. I’m also a fan of fettucine del giardino, a sumptuous combination of shrimp, spring fennel, pine nuts and transplanted Maui onions that he grows on Valley soil.

The patio is used primarily in the later part of the evening, as the summer heat and traffic noise are distractions at rush hour. It is surrounded by a high hedge so you do not actually see the Boulevard traffic.

French doors from the restaurant open directly onto it, and the owner has rigged an ingenious plastic tarp, which directs the cooled air from inside onto the patio, insuring maximum comfort.

Don’t leave without trying one of Tino’s great homemade desserts. Best are a trio of sorbets--plum, lemon and white nectarine--or for stalwarts, the swooningly rich torta di cioccolato, a crusty Italian take on chocolate cream pie.

* 15005 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks, (818) 905-8402.

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Chin Chin

Anyone who has eaten in Hong Kong or Singapore is accustomed to street stalls, where noodle and rice dishes are slurped up with more abandon than they would be in more genteel surroundings.

When Bob Mandler first opened Chin Chin, now with six locations, I thought the food too Americanized. Not so anymore. Despite the presence of the odd dish that comes up bland, food at Chin Chin can be terrific, and the Encino restaurant has one of the two or three best Chinese kitchens in the entire Valley.

The patio is actually in the corner of a shopping mall, but its corner placement behind a gushing fountain and the wide red umbrellas shielding tables from the elements are clever devices. Most of the chairs out here are wood, backed with comfy seat cushions, but a small percentage are those awful white plastic ones sold at Home Depot for $6 a pop. Avoid them if possible.

Some dishes will surprise. Cantonese dumplings are what the more authentic dim sum restaurants call fun gor, diaphanous rice flour dumplings filled with a mixture of chopped chicken, shrimp, peanut and vegetables. The classic shredded chicken salad is huge, a glass bowl filled to the brim with roasted white meat chicken, shredded lettuce, scallions, toasted almonds and crispy noodles and tossed with a tangy vinaigrette redolent of red ginger.

Roasted meats are especially good, as are most things cooked in the wok. Hunan chicken is wickedly spicy and falls off the bone tender, prepared in a marinade of hoisin, garlic, ginger and cilantro. BBQ spareribs are red and sticky, with sweet, crusty surfaces and lean meat.

The best vegetable is probably string beans, stir fried with lots of salty pickled Chinese radish and the right amount of crushed red pepper. Pass on the gummy, one-dimensional noodles with peanut sauce, a glutinous mass, in favor of chow fun, thin slices of flank steak, bean sprouts and onion sauteed with mouth-watering rice noodles. It’s the perfect outdoor dish, exactly like what one experiences at night markets in Hong Kong, pre- or post-handover.

* 16101 Ventura Blvd., Encino. (818) 783-1717.

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Four Oaks

No matter how sweltering the day, it is always reasonably cool in the evening up in Beverly Glen, where the air is continually permeated with the scent of blooming jasmine.

The romantic Four Oaks is a converted wood and brick house with a long and checkered history. The back of the menu implies it was once a house of ill repute. Its lengthy text recounts a colorful history of the property.

A friend described this patio as dinky. A Realtor might call it cozy.

We are seated at a table next to doors opening directly onto the restaurant, and when one of my guests lights up her cigarette (smoking is permissible outside here,) the smoke blows directly onto an elegant lady dining on the inside, causing her to request the doors be closed.

But it is charming here, in this simple yard surrounded by trees and shrubs. One dines under faded white canvas umbrellas, served by a team of young and restless waiters. These men are handsome enough to be love interests on a soap, and they work from a sideboard built into a flower laden hillside.

Four Oaks may be accomplished, but to my mind the prices are hefty for the experience. Chef Peter Roelants is Swiss; he worked with the legendary Freddy Girardet in Lausanne. But there is nothing cutting-edge or innovative about his new menu.

The majority of appetizers are ornately conceived soups and salads. We find the chilled organic tomato soup with vodka-lime fragrance rather nondescript. Better is a simple salad of organic greens tossed with candied lemon peel and extra virgin olive oil.

Among main courses, a roasted swordfish with Thai spices and crisp pepper oil potatoes is a standout, while skin crusted whitefish with vegetable couscous and olive-scented fennel commits the all too American sin of being an overcooked piece of fish.

Pan seared beef tenderloin is a stingy but high quality portion afloat in a whiskey and cracked pepper sauce, and everybody loves the cheddar filled twice-baked potato that comes with it.

For dessert, there is Tahitian vanilla ice cream profiterole with a rich, dark chocolate sauce, a confection that could be sublime were the pastry warm, and a very fine black currant nougatine, a frozen dessert that can claim to be the most European item on the entire menu.

* 2181 N. Beverly Glen Blvd., Bel-Air. (310) 470-2265.

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Le Chene

Exit the Antelope Valley Freeway on Sierra Highway and head north, and there is the profound sense of escaping the city. Nine miles north of Soledad Canyon Road, you come to a sprawling stone house with a bucolic outdoor garden. Behind the house is an actual mill framed in a grove of lovely oak trees. This is Le Chene, perhaps the most countrified fine dining experience in Los Angeles County.

Le Chene serves outdoors on a newly refurbished deck. Chene is French for oak, and the tables are located directly in the shadow of the restaurant’s trademark live oak tree, which looms over diners. The tables and chairs are plastic, but when tables are covered with linens and set with silver and flowers, the charm and grace seems to multiply on the spot.

The hostess warned us about bees, but the warning proved groundless. Food at Le Chene tends to be old school and heavily sauced, but the cooking is competent and the choice of wines, which are stored in refrigerated cellars directly under the very deck you are dining on, are simply amazing.

A waitress will bring the restaurant’s blackboard menu to your table. Our meal commenced with appetizers such as quenelles, salmon dumplings from Lyon, a near-perfect artichoke vinaigrette and a leaden crab cake, further weighed down by a gluey white sauce.

You’ll get the best out of Le Chene ordering dishes that are on the light side. Sand dabs Veronique are wonderful--sauteed, flour-dredged filets of the delicate fish with peeled white grapes. Scallops Provencale are tender and garlicky, mingling with buttery mushroom caps. And the lamb chops are tolerable, three meaty chops that do not much benefit from the surfeit of rich sauce they are smothered in.

Desserts include a mouth-watering meringue glace, an orange Bavarian cream and a crackling creme bru^lee. Sunday brunch is especially popular out here, but in deepest summer, when Canyon Country heats up like a furnace, it is best to visit Le Chene after dusk.

* 12625 Sierra Highway, Saugus. (805) 251-4315.