Steakhouse swank

BECAUSE the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel’s outdoor Tropicana bar is white-hot right now, the people-watching on the way into Dakota, the hotel’s new contemporary chophouse restaurant, is so enticing it’s worth the price of a drink in the grand old hotel lounge (updated with black leather chairs and daybeds) just to see the partygoers traipse by.

Strange how, despite the somewhat shabby reality, a thin veil of glamour still sticks to Hollywood and somehow elicits the vamp even in people who would be better advised to keep it buttoned up. Oh, the bared bellies and tattoos and death-defying stilettos you’ll see, the pumped up, the preened, the bewigged and bejeweled. This is definitely the place to take out-of-town guests for a looky-loo.

The restaurant’s black leather tablecloths and the curtains at the entrance that look like black leather licorice are just pervy enough to give Dakota some street cred. But the dining room, with its old Hollywood history (this is where the first Academy Awards were held in 1929), is the real star. The proportions are beautiful: high ceilings, pillars to break up the space and tall windows with long drapes.

Designer Dodd Mitchell has covered the curved booths along the windows in tufted black leather and upholstered the chairs in chestnut and caramel suede for an updated, retro feel. The leather bar stools may be the most comfortable on Earth. Fortunately, Mitchell has had the sense to step back and let the room breathe.

But the restaurant, a project from restaurateurs Tim and Liza Goodell, who also own Meson G, doesn’t reinvent the contemporary chophouse genre (that’s been done already by Tom Colicchio at Craft in New York). I admit I was expecting something spectacular from Tim Goodell, who dazzled at Aubergine, his now-closed Newport Beach French-California restaurant. But after 18 years behind the stoves, he seems to have switched direction and seems hellbent on teasing out his inner entrepreneur -- with mixed results. It’s as if in staking his claim to this piece of Hollywood turf, he’s decided to set his sights quite a bit lower than he has previously. That’s exactly what it means to go Hollywood.

Appetizing sides

GOODELL has stepped out from behind the stoves: Jeff Armstrong, who worked with Goodell at Whist in the Viceroy hotel, is the chef here. Everything is reasonably well executed, but nothing has much personality or passion behind it.

After quite a few meals at Dakota I’ve concluded that the sides and first courses trump the main courses.

If you have a penchant for onion rings, you’ll be thrilled. Better put in a couple of orders for the table. These are the best I’ve ever encountered anywhere and quite enough to put the restaurant in my personal hall of fame. Stacked tall and served in a dainty cast-iron skillet, they’re light and golden, cut tall as a silver cuff, and absolutely without a speck of grease. Perfect.

Oysters on the half shell are excellent too, though sometimes a touch less chilled than I like them. There’s also a small menu of seafood cocktails, i.e., shrimp, blue crab, Maine lobster or a combo, all perfectly acceptable, but just not vibrant and not very generous either. A few wan lumps of blue crab on lettuce didn’t do much for me.

The fritto misto of calamari and shrimp with lemon and a garlic aioli makes a nice appetizer to share. The steak tartare definitely passes muster too, hand-chopped, topped with a wee quail egg and flanked by a scoop of dusky black olive tapenade and shavings of Reggiano Parmesan.

Who doesn’t enjoy the fuss of a Caesar salad prepared tableside for two or more? Our waiter was nervous, but game: He turned out a satisfying version made with fresh, crisp romaine garnished with hand-torn sourdough croutons and fried capers. What’s not to like? And instead of the usual steakhouse salad of beefsteak tomatoes and onion, the kitchen sends out sliced heirloom tomatoes in a rainbow of colors with some burrata, that creamy fresh mozzarella-like cheese made locally. I don’t get the wedge of lettuce salad, though. Instead of that old standby iceberg, it’s butter leaf, which doesn’t particularly enjoy being marshaled into a wedge, and it’s cloaked in a dressing generously laced with crumbled Point Reyes blue cheese and so much apple-wood smoked bacon it becomes heavy-handed.

I didn’t have a single steak that stood out from the pack. When I go to a chophouse, I’m counting on getting a steak that’s better than what I could make at home, because restaurants have the buying power to get the really great prime beef. Though the steaks at Dakota are 100% prime Black Angus, they don’t exude flavor. They could be juicier too.

Actually, the rosy sliced duck breast with the leg cooked up as confit is better than any of the steaks. And a thick veal chop makes a good first impression one night too for its fine flavor and texture. Though the presentation of the cote de boeuf for two (28 ounces at $80) is suavely professional, I’m left wondering why I just didn’t order the less expensive flatiron steak for $24. The difference isn’t earthshaking.

Disappointing too is a rubbery broiled Maine lobster one night. On the other hand, the lemon-thyme Jidori chicken may be the bargain of the menu. Priced at $24, it is homey and comforting, the flesh juicy and suffused with the taste of the lemon and thyme.

Do order up sides with abandon. The creamed spinach served in a small cast-iron casserole has more texture and deep earthy flavor than most. There’s a very good potato gratin too, and for mushroom fanciers, either a skillet of sauteed mushroom caps or, when they’re in season, sauteed hen-of-the-woods or maitake mushrooms.

The wine list is still a work in progress, but certainly is already more interesting than many hotel lists, though with the high prices that seem to go with the territory.

As for dessert, I was unlucky. A new pastry chef, Eric Ernest, had just arrived the day before my last visit -- so I didn’t get the chance to taste the revamped dessert menu, which was in need of an overhaul. I could hardly call the desserts I’d had on previous visits Dakota’s strongest suit. Enough said.

‘80s attitude

AT least if you have to wait for a table at Dakota, you won’t be bored.

But you might be steamed, since more likely than not, when you call for a reservation the only choices on offer will be 6:15 p.m., when all good geezers go to dine, or 9:45. Both are offered up with a sauceboat of attitude intended to make you feel grateful you’ve achieved any reservation at all.

Every time I hear that smug voice on the phone at Dakota, I have to wonder just what they’re thinking. That this is still the ‘80s when you had to reserve months in advance to even get the table by the bathroom in the hottest new restaurants? The management doesn’t seem to be aware of how fleeting the crowds can be just about anywhere these days. As soon as the next new place opens, the trendoids are off in search of a table there.

Sometimes I wonder if the “fully booked” state is even true. One night we managed to eke out an 8:45 or 9 p.m. reservation and arrived early on the off-chance our table might be free. It was -- along with half the dining room. When we left a couple of hours later, true, the room was almost full, but hardly overflowing.

The restaurant entrepreneur thing is harder to pull off than it seems for someone used to spending his time behind the stoves. At Dakota, there’s a disconnect between the front-of-the-house staff and the kitchen, and while, on some nights, the managers are personable and make every effort to bring the dining room to life, on other nights it can feel like nobody is running the show. And too often, the food seems like, well, hotel food.

Dakota is, for now, part of the Roosevelt’s improbable comeback as a scene. But maybe because it has to satisfy both the tourists staying in the hotel and the stylish set coming to see and be seen, it never quite comes into focus.

*

Dakota

Rating: * 1/2

Location: Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, 7000 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles, (800) 950-7667; (323) 769-8888.

Ambience: An old Hollywood hotel restaurant turned contemporary chophouse dressed up in black leather and suede. The crowd is a mix of hotel guests and the ferociously trendy style set looking for the next hotspot. This is it, for the moment.

Service: Can’t decide whether to put on attitude or go with the flow.

Price: Dinner appetizers, $10 to $30; fish and shellfish, $30 to $60; meat and poultry, $24 to $40; sides, $7 to $8.

Best dishes: Kumamoto oysters, onion rings, steak tartare, Caesar salad made tableside, veal chop, duck breast and leg confit, hanger steak, maitake mushrooms, creamed spinach, potato gratin.

Wine list: A work in progress with more interesting choices than many hotel lists. Corkage, $20.

Best table: One of the svelte leather booths along the windows.

Details: Open for breakfast from 6 to 11 a.m. daily; for lunch 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Monday through Saturday; for a la carte brunch from 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday; and for dinner from 6 to 11 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and from 6 to midnight Friday and Saturday. Validated valet parking, $6.

Rating is based on food, service and ambience, with price taken into account in relation to quality. ****: Outstanding on every level. ***: Excellent. **: Very good. *: Good. No star: Poor to satisfactory.