A scene sprinkled with stardust

WEEKENDS, twentysomethings on the prowl for a fun, splashy evening gravitate to La Cienega or Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood, or to the Cahuenga corridor and Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood. That’s where most of the extravagantly appointed restaurant-lounge-clubs -- places like Republic, Citizen Smith, Sunset Beach and Geisha House -- are located.

But what’s a girl to do if she lives in Glendale or Burbank or Eagle Rock? Come 1 or 2 a.m., after a night of drinking and partying, it’s a long way home.

Enter Minx, a sprawling new Glendale club that offers some of the glamour of those West Hollywood and Hollywood spots, a fine-dining restaurant and a bar menu, and the bonus of a crowd of geographically similar club-goers. If you meet someone at Minx, located near the junction of the 134 and 2 freeways, he or she just may turn out to live nearby. The club is open Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, so you can have dinner and stay to party until 1 a.m.

On those three nights, in fact, the place is jammed. Just before 10 p.m., when the club officially opens, the line of people waiting to get inside stretches into the parking lot and dozens of cars inch their way up Harvey Drive and past a strategically placed In-N-Out Burger.

Hard to believe this free-form contemporary structure with enormous white canvas sails shading the wraparound outdoor terraces was once a humble Rusty Pelican. Designer Margaret “Peg” O’Brien, who has decorated Republic and other trendy venues, has sprinkled a little stardust over the exterior and interior of the once-prosaic space.

The spacious main dining room has floor-to-ceiling windows with views of the city and mountains. O’Brien’s design features whimsical lighting fixtures, pebble trails embedded in the floor and dark wood tables. A trio of high-sided booths are large enough for six to squeeze into. There’s also a leaf-shaped communal table with high stools for larger groups of friends. Tables are bare, each place set with woven silver-and-turquoise vinyl placemats and stemware in good, all-purpose shapes. On Saturday nights, an outdoor bar is in full swing and VIP cabanas are for rent for those who want to entertain in high style.

But if you come for dinner as opposed to lounging, you may go away as disgruntled as the occasional Rusty Pelican customer who wanders in and wonders what on Earth has happened to the old place. Though the owners have hired 33-year-old Joseph Antonishek -- an experienced chef who has worked at Jean Georges and Mesa Grill in New York, among others, and was most recently chef at O-Bar in West Hollywood -- the food, with only a few exceptions, just isn’t very good.

Baby arugula salad tastes as if the kitchen simply shook the leaves out of the bag, squirted on a yuzu vinaigrette and tossed. The accompaniments are stale walnuts, pan-fried Japanese pear slices and the miniature grilled-cheese sandwich that enticed me to order the dish. But as far as I can tell, the sandwich is neither grilled nor fried -- the Roquefort inside is still cold. Lobster and corn bisque is floury and excessively rich, with no sign of corn.

Giant ravioli with a zucchini and eggplant filling are, without a doubt, the worst ravioli I’ve ever been served anywhere, overcooked to the point the pasta is practically porridge and inflicted with a thick sauce of red bell pepper and tomatoes with a sweet kick. On top is what looks like a miniature football and turns out to be a squash blossom filled with goat cheese and deep-fried to a dark pigskin color.

Main courses are even worse than those starters. Barramundi, a beautiful fish from Australia that’s now farm-raised in Indonesia, is cooked to limp rags and not helped by a horseradish jus or the gluey mashed potatoes. A greasy braised lamb shank is poorly served by a root vegetable risotto that’s cooked well past the al dente stage. And it’s hard to believe that the thin, gray piece of beef coated in chopped hazelnuts and cocoa nibs is the filet mignon it’s purported to be. What an awful idea.

The kitchen gets into trouble by making the presentation more important than the taste. It seems to me many dishes don’t have an internal logic. Instead of being built from the ground up, flavor by flavor, they’re more like prefabs with add-ons. Even so, the execution isn’t up to par and is especially inept when the chef is not in the kitchen. I suspect that part of the problem is that on slow nights -- in other words, nonclub nights -- the kitchen staff is stripped back to a minimum.

Or it could be that the guy is overworked: Minx is open for lunch or brunch and dinner seven days a week. Or it could be that the kitchen is criminally understaffed, I don’t know.

What I do know is that, not unlike its counterparts in the trendier parts of town, the food is not primarily the focus. The owners aren’t really running a restaurant here. It’s the club that makes the money, and the restaurant feels like an afterthought. Despite the PR build-up that’s been lavished on chef Antonishek, dinner is not the draw here. It’s more part of the decor.

But those who come to touch base with the weekend scene can probably find something to nosh. Antonishek’s large, global menu mentions all the au courant buzzwords and ingredients.

Sushi rolls are ideal for sharing and taking the edge off your hunger before the appetizers arrive. Shrimp and lobster tempura roll with a spicy creme fraiche works well, with clean, bright flavors. So does the Kobe beef carpaccio roll that incorporates baked eel and a sweet soy glaze into the mix. (This, though, seems like the opposite of an amuse. Instead of waking up your palate, it’s heavy enough to put it to sleep.)

Other sushi rolls are less successful. The special sushi roll one night is a fat wad of rice with salmon, shrimp and cucumbers wrapped in nori and fried in tempura batter, with a garnish of wasabi cream. But the roll is so loosely wrapped it falls apart when you pick up a slice with your chopsticks, the rice is gummy, and the sauce is a very sweet teriyaki sauce -- terrible with the fish, and terrible for any wine that follows it.

Flashes of flavor

SOME of Antonishek’s ideas are smart and winning, such as the heirloom bean salad of yellow and green beans cooked very al dente tossed in a black pepper vinaigrette and embellished with aged sheep’s milk cheese. The flavors are focused and true. I also like the robata skewers. For $12, you get five skewers of tender cubes of filet mignon, which you eat by scooping the meat into lettuce cups with mung bean sprouts and a dab of hoisin sauce.

Some appetizers are so hefty they probably should be main courses. Why, for example, is pan-fried lobster with pasty basil mashed potatoes and lemongrass-infused tomato sauce an appetizer? The lobster is a little tough, and not exactly enticing, but lobster spells luxe; I’ll bet it’s one of their most popular first courses.

A tall cylinder of steak tartare, hand-chopped and tossed in an oily dressing, features, on the bottom layer, a salad of diced potatoes and vegetables in mayonnaise. The potato salad is delicious, but the idea of raw beef snuggling up to mayonnaise is off-putting. And while no one at my table can stay away from the deep gold house-made potato chips plated next to the steak tartare, why are they there? They’re too fragile and thin to scoop up the raw beef. Some toast would be nice.

Though the kitchen gets in some high-quality seafood, too often it’s overcooked. The one item that is not is the wild salmon, a nicely conceived Asian dish of noodles and calamari topped with a thick filet of salmon. The fish has some flavor and a variation of texture because it’s still almost rare in the center.

Halibut roasted in banana leaves is one of the more attractive main courses. The red Thai curry sauce and the sticky rice would make a wonderful foil for the bland halibut; too bad the fish is so dried out it tastes like cotton.

At least the prices aren’t outrageous: Compared with similar spots in Hollywood and West Hollywood, where main-course price tags can be vertiginous, Minx’s are moderate, especially considering the investment that has gone into the makeover. It’s rare that any dish is priced at more than $29, and on some nights there’s a three-course prix fixe menu for $25.

And fortunately, Antonishek has hired some of the nicest waiters I’ve encountered recently. Dressed in black, they’re young and enthusiastic, happy to answer any questions about the menu or to go back to the kitchen to check on a detail.

Although on weekends the place is overstuffed with partygoers, it hasn’t been embraced by the neighborhood on other nights, when it can be more than half empty, sometimes with just a handful of tables occupied.

Desserts, sad to say, don’t save the evening. A tomatillo-cinnamon crisp arrives looking like a craft project from the ‘50s, decorated with a palm tree made out of a cinnamon stick with mint leaves stuck in one end. Tomatillos with a sugary crust do not a great dessert make, and not even a decent raspberry sorbet can save it.

A warm skillet-baked cookie dotted with macadamia nuts and peanut butter chips that’s highly recommended by our waiter tastes more like an excruciatingly sweet flattened cake than a cookie, and the coconut gelato on top tastes as if it’s chemically enhanced.

You’re better off with the tropical fruit box, a ginger-flavored tropical fruit salad presented in a huge box made of ice embedded with lemon slices.

The best strategy may be the one the club-goers have already found: a drink and something from the lounge menu, which features little dishes like Sichuan chicken wings and a mini-burger sampling.

But be careful if you order bottle service: Patron Silver or Makers Mark goes for $300, Hennessey XO for $525 and Louis XVIII for $4,000 (quantities of this last, however, are limited). The wine list may be uninspired, but prices are much more in line with what everyone else is charging.

If you do sign on for dinner, my best advice is to start with a sushi roll and an order of the filet mignon robata, and then maybe the organic chicken breast. I know, I know, chicken breast is usually there for people with no imagination. Bottom line, though: This is something the kitchen can deliver.

In the case of Minx, I think we could do with less imagination and much more attention to the basics of cooking. An executive chef’s job is not done once the menu is scripted: Running a kitchen demands daily, hourly attention. As with almost everything worthwhile in this world, the proof is in the execution.

*

virbila@latimes.com

*

Minx Restaurant & Lounge

Rating: Half a star

Location: 300 Harvey Drive, Glendale; (818) 242-9191; www.minx-la.com.

Ambience: Slick Hollywood-style restaurant and lounge set in a former Rusty Pelican at the junction of the 134 and 2 freeways with a sleek contemporary look and a wraparound outdoor patio with outdoor bar.

Service: Enthusiastic and earnest.

Price: Dinner appetizers, $9 to $16; main courses, $17 to $36; dessert, $8; occasional 3-course prix fixe tasting menu, $25.

Best dishes: Heirloom bean salad with aged sheep’s milk cheese, filet mignon robata lettuce cups, steak tartare, shrimp and lobster tempura roll with spicy creme fraiche, wild salmon with wok-charred calamari and noodles, organic chicken breast, iced tropical fruit box.

Wine list: Uninspired and predictable. Corkage fee, $12.

Best table: In the front corner.

Special features: Lounge-club open after 10 p.m. Thursday through Saturday.

Details: Open for lunch 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Friday, for dinner 5 to 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, until 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday; and for weekend brunch 10:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. The lounge is open from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. Thursday through Saturday ; late-night menu served until 1 a.m. Full bar. Valet parking, $3.

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.