RESTAURANT REVIEW : Couple Make Lancaster Establishment a Big-Time Operation

Cakes and Company calls itself a big-city restaurant in a small town, and I wouldn’t argue. And when the town is Lancaster, perched on the edge of the Mojave Desert, one as accomplished as this qualifies as a small miracle.

The restaurant belongs to a couple of transplanted city folk named Mitchell and Susan Frieder. Mitchell Frieder is one of those fellows usually categorized in the food world as a “young American chef,” a protege of Ken Frank (proprietor of La Toque) with solid credentials in San Francisco and Los Angeles kitchens. Susan is a New York-trained pastry maker who once managed an Il Fornaio.

It’s a pretty restaurant--too pretty for the sterile modernity of Lancaster, perhaps--designed for small-town relaxation. The dining room is woodsy, high-ceilinged and somewhat precious: booths upholstered with flower prints, Japanese-style cherry blossom wallpaper painted by the Frieders themselves. Light pours in through a skylight in the center of the dining room.

But the fact that you enter through the bakery puts a different spin on things. That’s where you see Arborio rice, biscotti , chocolate-covered biscotti and other delicacies for sale on the pastry counter, to go with an array of magnificent-looking breads and cookies that you want to eat on sight. And that’s the moment you realize that you are about to get lucky.

The restaurant actually opens at 7:30 a.m. and stays open through dinner. Come for breakfast, and you’ll get to eat some of Susan Frieder’s herb-flavored breads, crumbly cornmeal muffins, homemade granola or fluffy oatmeal with dried apricots. Three wonderful pancake dishes come with real maple syrup: cornmeal johnnycakes; airy, dollar-sized, sour-cream pancakes called Heavenly Hots, and my favorite, the multi-grain company cake. Because this is, in essence, still rural California, you’ll also find grits, biscuits and country ham on this menu, to go with the Graffeo coffee and strawberry/mint lemonade that the townsfolk here are still getting used to.

Lunch is something else again. Chef Frieder is a foodie in the strictest sense of the word, and his menu reflects the eclecticism. Try a plate of his classic hummus, served with wedges of toasted herb-flavored pita bread, or one of his rosti potato cakes and see whether you don’t agree. Frieder’s rosti is unlike the classic Swiss potato-onion cake, but no matter--it’s a crackling cake, looking not unlike hash-brown potatoes, but what a difference. Topped with sour cream and golden caviar, it’s the equal, I’d say, of any Los Angeles restaurant version.

The lunchtime sandwiches are all good too, if less remarkable in the context of the Mojave Desert. Grilled prawn sandwich comes with rosemary onions, shredded lettuce and scallion mayo on a homemade baguette . . . definitely not truck-stop fare. The Philly cheese steak is a slightly inaccurate version of the dish, but delicious, made with white Cheddar and served on a soft buttermilk roll. There’s a mean, soft meat loaf sandwich with the chef’s own barbecue sauce. Grilled polenta wedges, explained on the menu as “a cornmeal pudding,” come in a somewhat ponderous tomato salsa with sauteed leafy vegetables that overpowers its delicacy.

Dinner time is when the chef really struts his stuff. Frieder jumps all over the globe--France, Italy, Mexico, the American South--at prices locals and big-city folk alike can relate to. He makes a classic pasta carbonara, flavored with just the right amounts of bacon, egg, cream and imported Parmesan. What he calls Grandma Emily’s deep-Southern pan-fried chicken is a breaded, boneless breast, accompanied by its very own pot of honey. Prawns del rey bathe in a chipotle -pepper tomato sauce. Some very French-looking scallops are served en tian, with spinach and garlic on a diaphanous, crusty bed of sliced potatoes.

When it’s time for dessert, you will only be held back by your own capacity. Susan Frieder’s desserts are simple and spectacular, from her ultra-fudgy killer brownies to her three-nut tart, made with almonds, pecans, walnuts and chocolate ganache. Cheesecake lovers will be pleased to note that she makes a classic--untopped--New York-style cheesecake, and the more traditional should be pleased by her elegant wedding cakes, the backbone of any small-town baker. This may be a small-town establishment, but, in my book, this is also a big-time operation.

Suggested dishes: company cakes, $4; hummus, $3.15; rosti with caviar, $6.25; tian of scallops, $13.50; killer brownie, $3.

Cakes and Company, 858 W. Lancaster Blvd., Lancaster, (805) 948-CAKE. Breakfast 7:30-11 a.m. Monday-Saturday; lunch 11 a.m.-2:30 p.m. Monday-Saturday; dinner 5:30-9 p.m. Wednesday-Thursday, 5:30-9:30 p.m. Friday-Saturday. Beer and wine. Street parking. Dinner for two, food only, $20-$35.