Sunset Room Serves Attitude--and Asian-Influenced Dishes

Hollywood is full of surprises. Who would suspect that this deserted-looking block of Cahuenga just below Sunset Boulevard houses a grandiose restaurant and club called Sunset Room? Where a hatcheck girl languishes in her booth, and the velvet ropes outside are only unhooked after the muscle makes sure your reservation is bona fide? For a place that’s only been open six or so weeks, Sunset Room has plenty of attitude--not only the ropes and the crowd controllers, but also the bored voice who takes reservations, and the host’s whispered conference with a waiter over where to seat interlopers from the world of not-really-cool.

Holding the menus, the waiter leads us through what looks like an enormous former warehouse or post-production studio with a soaring roof, past all the glamorous ‘40s-style booths filled with sleek, designer-clad patrons and their dates in wispy cocktail dresses, to the enclosed patio at the back where everyone with children was seated.

Every few minutes the door opens and yet another guy--who is probably fast running out of conversation with his winsome and decades-younger date--heads for the patio to make a loud cell phone call, casually dropping business details for all to hear. Or, another bored model manquee would come out for a sit-down smoke, crossing her legs and swinging those Gucci stiletto heels.

The food by Claude Segal, a French chef who has been around the block once or twice (he last cooked at the late Pagani in West Hollywood, and before that at the now-defunct Drai’s), is very much in his signature style: composed salads and saucy entrees, this time with a trendy Asian influence. There’s a refreshing organic tomato soup laced with chopped vegetables, a skimpy ahi tuna salad that’s mostly slivered greens in an achingly sweet dressing. Maine lobster wontons would be improved by a more delicate wrapper.

The best entree we try is the pan-fried filet mignon pepper steak encrusted with enough black peppercorns to give it real bite. It comes with a pile of delicious French fries. Lake Superior whitefish is perfectly cooked, but overwhelmed by so much strongly flavored balsamic reduction you can hardly taste the fish, which is a shame. French chefs have a bad habit of giving a dish an Asian twist by splashing on rice vinegar or soy sauce and a little ginger. Segal is no exception. A perfectly nice grilled tuna steak isn’t enhanced by an extremely salty soy-based sauce. And the bok choy served with it are as limp as old seaweed.

If the staff would lose some of its attitude, the Sunset Room might attract more of Segal’s faithful fans who have followed him from restaurant to restaurant through the years. Better that than depend on the fickle trend-seeking crowd, who will, inevitably, move on to the next new place.

BE THERE

Sunset Room, 1430 N. Cahuenga Blvd., Hollywood. (323) 463-0004. Open for dinner 7 to 11 p.m. Appetizers, $7 to $10. Main courses, $15 to $32. Valet parking.