By Paul Reidinger

A FOUNDLING RESTAURANT that finds itself starring in a national television advertising campaign faces a prospect not unlike that of Macauley Culkin or some other child movie star who steps into fame and fortune too early and spends a long celebrity afterlife vainly trying to rekindle the magic. Fog City Diner opened in 1985, at almost the midpoint of the woozy, snoozy Reagan era (and five years before Home Alone), and almost immediately leaped to prominence in one of those Visa "they don't take American Express" spots.

They still don't, lo these many years later, with the Reagan administration a fuzzy if not warm memory and Macauley Culkin some kind of goth and the mod American diner now a well-established concept in this city. I suppose the day Fog City does start to accept AmEx is the day we will have to start worrying about it, but that day is not only not imminent but not really imaginable, for the place is still très fresh. The dining-car setting – low mahogany ceiling, cozy booths, lots of black-and-white deco tiling – engages interest without shouting for attention; the service is highly accomplished and professional; and the food is an exuberant pan-cultural hodgepodge that offers a little something for every taste.

We were especially impressed by the efficiency of the sidewalk service, a matter in which trouble – neglect, bad weather – so often arises. The Fog City service crew knows the drill (no long waits, water glasses promptly refilled), perhaps because the neighborhood's benign weather has given the staff plenty of practice over the years in dealing with the sun-lubbers outside. Fog City actually sits in one of the fog city's less foggy precincts, protected as it is from westerly mist and chill by Telegraph Hill, whose clifflike face, lightly penciled with grass, rises a mere block away. Just beyond the restaurant's northern nose, meanwhile – which protudes as a kind of hemispherical observation bubble – arcs the Embarcadero and its clattering, tourist-laden F trains.

Is Fog City a tourist trap? Not at midday, certainly: The noontime crowd seems to consist – if cell phones and briefcases and a general aura of harriedness are indications – heavily of people who work in the area (Levi's Plaza is right down the street). The pace is accordingly brisk. In the evenings, on the other hand, one does catch the distinctive scents of day-trippers and out-of-towners in search of an authentic city experience. The blend of clientele from near and far reminds us that, just as tourists provide much-needed traffic at Fog City, locals and neighborhooders provide a just-as-much-needed honesty check: They will not accept overpriced dreck; they will not be distracted or mollified by such amusements as the admonishment – "no crybabies" – neatly lettered on the front door.

There is, of course, no need to cry when you are eating well. And you would have to strain not to eat well at Fog City, though the food is not entirely without flaws. To wit: I was a bit surprised and disappointed to find that one of chef Gregory Hutchinson's most expensive dinnertime productions, a plate of grilled Pacific swordfish ($18), was far too salty. And I like salt. The most likely culprit seemed to us to be the caper-studded salsa verde with which the fish had been basted; but on the other hand the nicely layered salad of haricots verts, wax beans, and frisee beneath the fish did bring a mollifying, and seasonal, note.

Apart from the rare glitch, the sailing is pretty smooth. Choices range from such Americanisms as a Cobb sandwich ($9.50) of grilled chicken, avocado, bacon, tomato, and blue cheese on a soft roll – "the sandwich that thinks it's a salad," said a well-satisfied friend – to a Pacific Rim dish of red curry mussel stew ($7.95), essentially a bowl of mollusks simmered in a Thai-style coconut-milk curry. And fried cheese? (A Marge reverie, as Homer is buried in a piano crate: "I wish they'd never invented fried cheese!" But they did, Marge, they did!) Fog City's ($5.95) consists of fritterish little rounds of Point Reyes blue, breaded and fried to a crunchy medium gold. Rich, but not really piano-crate material.

Some of the ethnic influences seem fairly pure: seviche ($5.95) in a martini glass, with plenty of tomato, cucumber, and scallion to lend a gazpacho-like sheen, and chili-dusted tortilla chips heaped at the base of the glass. You'd find something like this at many a nuevo Latino restaurant. Piccolo bread ($3.75) – soft Italian bread sticks, bathed in tomato sauce and Asiago cheese – are similarly straight out of nearby North Beach.

But the kitchen also brings a certain abandon to some of its cross-cultural pollinations, as with a gorgeously smoky soup ($6.50) of tomatillo, pasilla pepper (roasted?), and Asiago. Shaking beef ($19), meanwhile, features chunks of stir-fried tenderloin, served with traditional sides of lemon juice and salt and with what I suppose is an untraditional – at least in Vietnam – salad of tomato, cucumber, and watercress.

And the dessert menu includes at least one item of genius. That would be the crème brûlée bread pudding ($6.95), which substitutes a dense, sticky packing of bread for the traditional custard but in every other respect – shape, color, caramelized-sugar cap – could pass for the standard item. After a finish like that, your typical diner (not to mention yours truly) will happily slap down the old Visa card.