Spangles: Food You Can Take Home to Mom

At Spangles: An American Restaurant in Brentwood Village you can take out grilled mahi mahi salad, moist boneless chicken breast with a light black bean sauce and a baker’s dozen of beers from La Trobe, Pa., to Wailuku, Hawaii. But what you should be taking out are the dishes that June Cleaver would have been most proud of.

Like that wow-mom plate of macaroni and cheese, that absolutely simple “Palm Beach” fruit salad of fully ripe melons served with a lusciously sweet raspberry puree, that smoky homemade split-pea soup chock-full of ham, and (imagine June after a trip down South of the Border way) that bowl full of a beautifully balanced guacamole with really crunchy chips.

A high mound of fresh, delicately dressed chicken salad embroidered with roasted almonds and apples is everything you might have had with your mom on a back-to-school shopping trip. And that meaty hamburger on a poppy seed bun with dreamy cole slaw comes with a dill pickle that could hold it’s own on Delancy Street.

Even the “Texas style” chili is something that June might have served; it’s all meat, no beans. But in this version for the ‘80s, it is served with warm, thick tortillas, red onions and grated cheese.

Mom’s meat loaf comes with appropriately lumpy mashed potatoes. There’s a pleasant lemon-lime roasted Key West chicken. All blue-plate entrees come with salad or homemade soup (the soup tastes homemade, the salad is ordinary), and credible baked potatoes or wild rice. If you live in the neighborhood, you might want to take home large, sweet buttermilk onion rings or Taos chicken lips (no mouths but your own involved--these are marinated strips of white meat laced onto skewers and served with good salsa and sour cream).

But there are also dishes you won’t want to take home to meet Mother. Sweet potato fries were soggy by the time we opened the box and couldn’t be revived. The best thing about the jauntily spiced but mushy “Savannah, Georgia” crab cakes was the thick remoulade sauce served on the side. As for the Georgetown garlic steak, it had barely enough garlic to spook a newborn vampire and should be avoided by anyone wearing upper or lower plates.

I would also skip the canned peach cobbler with its gummy crust and the over-sweet, much- touted Mocha Heath Bar Crunch Cake and go for the melon salad or Oreos and milk. Better still, forget the sweets and head straight for real, unsweetened lemonade and that baker’s dozen of beers. Dixie is smooth, Rolling Rock is winey, Little Kings is full-voiced, Lone Star is slouchy and thin and Maui Lager is an undemanding, easy beach beer of choice.

Spangles: An American Restaurant, 11714 Barrington Court, Brentwood Village, Los Angeles. (213) 472-3287. Open every day, 9 a.m.-10 p.m. Delivery hours: 6-10 p.m. Visa, MasterCard and American Express accepted. Meter parking in front. For Thanksgiving, complete meal or individual dishes to go. For five or more, order two days ahead.