Where Success Is in the Details : Tony Bill’s Maple Drive offers straightforward fare in a serene Beverly Hills setting

Maple Drive, 345 N . Maple Drive, Beverly Hills. (213) 274-9800. Open Monday-Friday for breakfast and lunch; nightly for dinner; for Sunday brunch. Full bar. Valet parking at night; validated parking in the daytime. All major credit cards accepted. Dinner for 2, food only, $40-$90.

Maybe restaurant owners don’t read reviews. Maybe they don’t care. But if they have opinions about what critics write, they rarely bother to express them. I get tons of mail from readers, but in all the time I’ve been writing reviews, I’ve only gotten three or four notes from restaurateurs.

Two of them were from Tony Bill. Both were handwritten. The fact that a celebrity would trouble himself to deal with that sort of detail probably explains a lot about his restaurants.

When his first, 72 Market St., opened in 1984 it was a huge success--but it wasn’t very good. A year later it was still a huge success--but it had also turned into a first rate restaurant. The food isn’t fancy, but it has its own integrity; chef Leonard Schwartz cooks food you’re glad to eat. The restaurant’s gotten better and better, and today 72 Market St. is one of the most appealing places around.

Now Tony Bill and Leonard Schwartz and their partners are trying to repeat their initial success.

Their second restaurant, like the first, is named for its address. Like 72 Market St., Maple Drive is an architecturally exciting space filled with good art. Like the first restaurant, this one serves fairly straightforward fare. Whether you like the restaurant or not, you have to have to admit that it moves like a well-oiled machine. Nothing here seems to happen by accident. For this is one more restaurant where attention has been paid to the details.

Breakfast on Monday--Does everybody around here sleep late? Are they all on diets? I’m surprised to discover that parking is easy, even more surprised to discover that the huge restaurant is almost empty. Morning’s aren’t exactly electric on Maple Drive. Having watched people become apoplectic waiting for tables in the evening, it’s almost eerie to waltz in and find that the entire restaurant belongs to you.

This is a beautiful room in which to begin the day; when the place isn’t papered with people you can actually see the art, notice the craftsmanship of the tables, watch the way the sun comes into the patio and bounces off of all the architectural angles. With the first cup of coffee you notice how comfortable the chairs are; with the second you become aware of thoughtful touches-- the salt and pepper grinders on the table, the soothing voice of the waitress.

Breakfast isn’t inspired, but it isn’t insipid either. I might be happier to break my fast with something more interesting than eggs, waffles, cereal and breakfast pastries, but I can’t complain about the quality of what I’m being served.

The omelet is huge, the potatoes that come with it tasty little red ones. The toast is made with homemade bread; it comes with homemade preserves. There’s a fine fruit salad.

It’s the breakfast pastries, however, that will bring me back. But why wait until then? As I take another bite of pain au chocolat , it occurs to me that if I take one with me when I leave it will certainly improve the day.

Lunch on Wednesday--It’s 1:30; when I called yesterday, there wasn’t a single other time available. Actually, it’s not clear that this time is available either: all the people sitting at the bar have an expectant air. I’m afraid that they’re waiting for tables too.

They are. There’s no room at the bar, so I sit on the bench by the hostess stand and watch a beautiful woman call what seems like hundreds of people to confirm their reservations. A lot of people, apparently, are going to be eating dinner here tonight. Business is good.

At 1:45 we are finally seated. Unfortunately, it’s at a table in the bar, the one place in the restaurant that feels like Siberia to me. The bar itself is dramatically placed high up overlooking the room, which unfolds beneath it, offering those who sit there quite a view. The patio is pretty. Some tables put you close to the piano (co-owner Dudley Moore is “musical director” of the restaurant, which has live music every night.) Other tables offer a view of the kitchen. For those who want privacy, there are great big booths. But there’s not a lot to recommend a table in the bar: the people at the bar have their backs to you, and the people waiting for tables mill about, blocking any view.

But the service is speedy. The cheeseburger is big, made of wonderful meat, and comes on a home-made bun. It is served with French fries that remind me so much of McDonald’s I can even smell the odor of warm grease wafting up towards me. My companion has a cup of spicy corn soup (all the soups I’ve tried here have been good) and a rather dry piece of grilled Norwegian salmon in salty mustard sauce.

We don’t have time for dessert, but as I am to discover later, this is not much of a loss.

Dinner on Thursday--The Reluctant Gourmet thinks that eating dinner at 9 is positively uncivilized. But when I called Monday morning for a Thursday reservation, it was the earliest available time. The RG grumbles all the way to the restaurant, and when he walks in to find people standing five deep at the bar, he is less than pleased. “I’m not waiting more than 15 minutes . . . “ he says, looking longingly at the door.

He doesn’t have to. Unbelievably this huge mass of waiting people is escorted, group by group, to tables, and 12 minutes later we are seated in one of the restaurant’s very cozy booths. This makes even the RG feel pretty swell: the last time we were here Dyan Cannon was in this very booth.

The waiter sizes up the RG; it takes about half a second for him to realize he has a hungry man on his hands. Bread and wine appear with amazing speed; the appetizers are whisked to the table.

We’ve been here before: the RG knows he likes the Caesar salad enough to forgive the fact that there’s a tomato on the plate. I know I want the yellowtail-and-tuna tartare, which I think is the single best dish on the menu. The raw fish is chopped, mixed with just enough wasabi to give it punch without making it painful, and placed on large grilled shiitake mushrooms. I’d also be happy to start with linguine with tomatoes, olives and eggplant, or any of the items from the oyster bar. (If you haven’t yet tasted Chiloe oysters, do so soon; the season in Chile is about to end.)

But I’ve come one last time to try things I haven’t had before, so I order the leek, artichoke and beet salad. It’s a disappointment: a bunch of ingredients sit forlornly on the plate wondering why the chef brought them together. Fortunately I follow it with foie gras sauteed with turnips, apples and spinach. It’s a good dish, and so generous that at $12, it’s a bargain.

I’ve had entrees I really liked (the thickest, most beautifully rare piece of tuna I can remember being served in a restaurant), entrees I liked a little ( osso buco was neither very good nor very bad) and entrees I actively disliked. Among the latter were an insipid steamed whitefish in lemon butter sauce, and suckling pig cooked on the rotisserie and then carved into papery dry slices. Tonight the RG has--what else--a New York steak. It comes with spinach and mashed potatoes, and while he doesn’t think it’s the best steak he’s ever had, it’s certainly not the worst. Besides, with these amazingly rich mashed potatoes on the side, who can think about meat?

I’m having the bouillabaisse , because I’ve read that Schwartz is proud of it. The rouille that comes with it is good. The toast for the rouille is good. But the bouillabaisse itself has, for my taste, too many shellfish (green-lipped mussels, shrimp, Manila clams) and not nearly enough fish. I taste it. I find myself saying, “it lacks the regal intensity of really fine bouillabaisse. “

The RG explodes with laughter. “Why don’t you stop talking nonsense,” he says, “and have some more mashed potatoes?” I say I’ll just have dessert instead.

I order rice pudding. And then just to be safe, I order flourless chocolate cake as well. And once again I puzzle over the fact that a kitchen that turns out such terrific breakfast pastries can’t do a better job with dessert.

But there’s one thing I feel sure of: the desserts will improve. If Maple Drive is at all like Tony Bill’s other restaurant, this is just the beginning.

Recommended dishes: yellowtail-and-tuna tartare, $12; foie gras, $12; charred tuna, $25. cheeseburger (at lunch only), $10.