RESTAURANT REVIEW : A Deli That’s Really thirtysomething

For years, I used to run to Victor’s wine shop on the corner of Franklin and Bronson avenues for food emergencies. It was the first stop on the way to a dinner party for which I’d promised to bring a bottle of good wine. And it was the last stop coming home from a long trip, when I knew there would be no good coffee in the house and nothing good to eat. (Besides having an encyclopedic selection of good wines, Victor’s, located in an unremarkable-looking building in a crowded and ugly little strip mall, roasts its own coffee.)

A good deal of what I know about coffee and wine came from Victor’s helpful salesclerks, who are always ready to solve such eternal dilemmas as: What is a great full-bodied red wine under $10 that will go with roast lamb?

Last spring, Victor’s opened up an annex, a delicatessen/coffee bar/restaurant that has proved as useful to the neighborhood as the wine shop. From the outside, no architectural statement distinguishes the new Victor’s restaurant from its environs: The facade fits right into its mini-mall. It’s surprising, then, to walk in and find hip charcoal-gray industrial carpet, black chairs and gallery-white walls hung with enlarged old photographs of the undeveloped Hollywood Hills.

Everyone who eats here looks like an actor from “thirtysomething”: purposeful, sincere. In fact, I once spotted a “thirtysomething” actor eating a Reuben at Victor’s.

The menu is vast. The dinner list appears to be standard comfort food: brisket, ribs, roast chicken, meat loaf and mashed potatoes, knishes and pasta salads too. There’s invariably a list of upscale-sounding specials--sophisticated pastas, fresh fish, red meat in a wine sauce. It’s hard to choose. On my first visit, I appealed to a pink-shirted waiter for help.

“What do you recommend?” I asked.

“I don’t know what to say,” he said. “What I like and what you like could be two different things.”

I tried a different tactic. “What’s on the cheese plate?” I asked.

“Cheese,” he said. “And some crackers.”

With no help from the waiter, I found out that Victor’s serves one of the best Greek salads I’ve had in a restaurant. It has creamy feta, good Kalamata olives and not much lettuce.

The Reuben is respectable--and huge. I took most of it home and managed to get two more lunches out of it. A penne dish with prosciutto comes with a well-spiced red sauce (and again, provided me with several additional meals).

A large, fluffy wedge of Chilean sea bass was perfectly cooked when I had it, and came with chopped tomatoes, basil, capers and a mound of very buttery rice. The meat loaf comes with a mushroom sauce and its own private mountain of mashed potatoes.

All entrees are served with soup or salad--the salad is spiked with arugula; a chicken rice soup is clear and nourishing.

For dessert, you can cruise Victor’s pie cases, which are filled with things like pistachio cake, bourbon-pecan-chocolate decadence, and cheesecakes filled with dark, promising centers. I tried a demure, plain-looking pumpkin cheesecake, which turned out to be creamy and plush.

The coffee, as I expected, was fresh-roasted, freshly made and wonderful.

Breakfast here is just what one might expect from a coffee shop with a hip edge. One could have a great cappuccino with potato latkes , fresh-squeezed orange juice with pirogen or a chocolate chip-cheesecake muffin with that consistently delicious fresh-brewed coffee. There are more traditional breakfast items--bacon and eggs, home fries and toasted bagels.

Once at breakfast I saw the manager bribe a teething baby into silence, not with Saltines but with an almond biscotti. Victor’s, in short, is a baby-boomer coffee shop--the easterly counterpart to Cafe Latte and Hugo’s.

Most coffee shops I’ve known have had contingents of elderly people from the immediate neighborhood who come in and eat hamburger steaks and broiled halibut with steamed frozen vegetables and Parker House rolls night after night.

But one morning, poring over a newspaper and a third cup of Victor’s great coffee, it occurred to me for the first time that there might well be a coffee shop for my generation. In thirty-something more years, on our own fixed incomes, we might become anachronisms in our own right by eating pasta alla checca and poached salmon, salad with arugula and one medicinal dose of some fabulous vintage red night after night at Victor’s.

Victor’s Delicatessen, 1917 Bronson Ave., Hollywood; (213) 464-0275. Open Sunday and Monday 8 a.m. to 9 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. American Express, MasterCard, Visa. Beer and wine. Parking available. Dinner for two, food only, $15-$35.