The Station offers eclectic menu

December 20, 7:29 AMSan Fernando Valley Restaurant ExaminerJuan Hovey

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Mariscada is available either as a main course or as an appetizer for four

If you want to know what to expect when you go to The Station, a relatively new upscale place near the Metrolink station in Chatsworth, just listen to what the owner, Steven H. Bilotta, has to say about himself:

"I was born Argentinian, and my family is Italian and Spanish - and you know what Argentinians say about themselves? We say we're really Italians who live like the French and think like the British."

In practical terms, this doesn't mean that you'll find Bilotta at the stove in his kitchen in a Saville-Row suit and tie, or that his wife Graciela, who does the desserts, and son Steven G. Bilotta, who runs things out front along with granddaughter Jordan Levine on weekends, will treat  you with the formality of a French or English maitre d. Instead, it means that you'll find an eclectic menu at The Station - one that combines the cuisines of Argentina, Spain, France, Great Britain and America in inventive ways.

Put another way, the ethnic stew that is the restaurant scene in the San Fernando Valley gives rise to lots of pleasant surprises, and The Station is definitely one of them.

Bilotta pere calls his cooking "fusion Italian cuisine," and his dishes come to your table with strong hints of France and Spain, plus a bit of England and even America thrown in for good measure. His ahi tuna Nicoise, for instance, comes with French beans, potatoes, egg, olives and capers - the usual ingredients in this classic French salad. But that's not all. It also comes with tapenade crostini, which is about as Italian as you can get.

The chop chop chicken salad, meanwhile, comes with chopped zucchini, tomatoes, asparagus, corn, lettuce and, of course, chopped chicken. The corn is the giveaway, right? This salad's got America on its mind. The pasta dishes cover the usual range - for example, spaghetti Bolognese, lobster ravioli, and lasagna layered with meat sauce, bechamel and Italian cheese. So do the main courses - veal marsala, filet aux poivres, duck Provencal, buillabaisse.

But it's in the specials that you find Bilotta pere at his creative best - and when you consider that he made his living as a mechanical engineer for 37 years before opening The Station 19 months ago, his creativity in the kitchen is all the more delightful.

Take, for example, his mariscada, available as a main course or as an appetizer serving four, and in either case a heaping combination of blue shrimp, clams, mussels, and calamari served on pasta blackened with the ink of a squid. Meanwhile the paella - maybe the biggest seller on the menu - comes on a bed of saffron rice plus two unusual ingredients, blood and sweet sausage. Where else can you get paella with blood and sweet sausage?

The Station is at 21515 Devonshire St., Chatsworth, 818-349-8500, just north of the Chatsworth Metrolink station.

More from south of the border
For a customary but consistently good take on the cuisine of Mexico, check out the three El Presidente restaurants in Mission Hills, Northridge and Santa Clarita, or the chain's two sibling restaurants, El Queso Grande in Granada Hills and El Chapparal in Canyon Country.

For the most part, these restaurants serve traditional Mexican food - or rather, Mexican food as traditionally cooked for  Americans, if you know what I mean. Put another way, you'll find at these places pretty much the same dishes available at any other Mexican restaurant - chiles rellenos, chile verde, arroz con pollo, tacos al carbon, and the like.

The difference is that somebody in the kitchen takes care in preparing these dishes, so that they come to your table consistently prepared, consistently good and, of course, piping hot. The chile verde, for instance, is one of the best iterations of this traditional dish I've had in the Valley. It is just spicy enough, with generous chunks of pork cooked to melt-in-your-mouth perfection.

The chain's specials are something else. On a recent night I had carne Tampiquena - a butterflied New York steak topped with a heaping mound of peppers, tomatoes, ham, bacon and Mexican spices, served with rice and beans. The deeper I dove into this dish, the less convinced I became that all these ingredients belonged on the same plate. On the other hand, I ate the whole thing with satisfaction, so the dish had - well, it had a lot going for it.

The three El Presidente restaurants are at 26625 Bouquet Canyon Rd., Santa Clarita, 661-297-7244; 11451 Sepulveda Blvd., Mission Hills, 818-365-7153; and 18441 Devonshire St., Northridge, 818-368-3658. El Queso Grande is at 10152 Balboa Blvd., Granada Hills, 818-368-9551, and El Chapparal is at 19132 Soledad Canyon Rd., Canyon Country, 661-252-5599.