Hey, make me over!

By Paul Reidinger

WHEN WE THINK of restaurant makeovers, we (i.e., I) tend to think of the upscalish places. That might be because more-upscalish places tend to command more attention in the first place, and because makeovers cost money, and money is the root of all upscalishness, and because the upscale people who do or don't go to upscalish places are fickle ("do" shades so easily into "did") and need to be lured by something fresh: chef, menu, name, set of lamps, coat of paint.

Further down the restaurant food chain, things seem more staid. Holes-in-the-wall, dives, greasy spoons, and the like often run for years with few or no changes other than the inevitable "adjustments" in prices. There is a yin-and-yang dimension to our feelings about all this: Upscale Self is dying to hit the Next Big Thing, which has just opened in the space left vacant by the implosion of last year's Next Big Thing (life among the Next Big Things does tend to be, as Hobbes foresaw, nasty, brutish, and short); while Homebody Self is left trembling with apprehension if the changeless, and beloved, Chinese restaurant down the block (eat in or take out!) so much as hangs a new sign.

Sometimes, it must be said, makeovers of little neighborhood places can be welcome and even necessary – the transformation, say, of drab little China Pepper, on outer Church Street, into the bright and spiffy Long Island Restaurant. China Pepper (which closed last year) was positively Dickensian in its gloom: yellowishly lit by what seemed to be no more than a bare bulb or two, with a sofa and a defunct console television stashed toward the rear of the dining room and food that was just fair despite a few nifty Burmese flourishes.

Clearly, for Long Island, there was nowhere to go but up, and the way up began with the carting off (back to the curb?) of that Simpsons-esque sofa and the dead TV and the installation of lighting that has not only chased away the funereal shadows of yesteryear but actually glows onto the street. Long Island's face is a beacon now, and while inside it's your standard, cheerful Noe Valley Chinese restaurant – clean and welcoming, nothing too fancy or showy – the banishing of gloom alone represents an improvement we must call remarkable.

In surroundings thus raised from the dead, the food is bound to seem better, and it is, though China Pepper's food wasn't entirely bad. Long Island has dropped the Burmese references in favor of "Sze Chuan and Mandarin Hunan" standards as they are understood in this country. That means – yes! – hot-and-sour soup ($5.95 for two). It needed soy sauce, which we liberally ladled in, but once revived it became an honorable, if familiar, ensemble of shredded bean curd, bamboo shoots, and beaten egg.

Szechuan shredded beef ($7.95) carries a little chile icon as a warning on the menu card, but we found it to be more sweet than hot – in part, perhaps, because of the abundance of carrot slivers. But the strips of meat were tender, and there were plenty of them. Still: a grade of B, no more. Better was the mandarin duck ($10.95), half a boneless bird rubbed with five-spice powder and roasted to produce the requisite crisp, bronze skin and (protected by a thick layer of fat) moist meat. The duck maniac thought this was the cat's pajamas. I, not being a duck maniac, thought it was good of its kind.

On the other hand, I am something of a turkey maniac, and so I took to the menu at Mi Lindo Yucatán like (sorry) a duck to water. Mention of Yucatecan cooking summons, for me, images of citrus-marinated, grilled things – plenty of hints of tropicality and nearness of the sea – but at Mi Lindo Yucatán you will find platters of pavo, or turkey, that in their juicy and mild flavorfulness could easily soothe many an irate Thanksgiving Day diner vexed by poultry flesh overroasted to leather. Relleno blanco de pavo ($7) even includes a gravylike white sauce, while escabeche de pavo ($7.25) gives the meat a garlic-vinegar marinade reminiscent of sauerbraten.

More typically Mexican, or Yucatecan (at least as those terms are used here), are a pair of close relations, panuchos ($1.50) and salbutes ($1.50). These antojitos are like little tostadas: small, open-faced tortillas smeared with black-bean paste and topped with shredded cabbage and diced, seasoned chicken. The difference between the two lies in the tortilla, which in the former is griddled to a slight crispness, and in the latter is fried to puffiness.

Mi Lindo Yucatán opened recently in a space that was some kind of Thai noodle house I always noticed when I passed it. But though I meant, sooner or later, to check it out – assuming, possibly, that it was changeless because modest and cheap – the road to dinner is paved with good intentions and I never did, and now it's changed into something else. One suspects that not much cosmetic work has been done inside; the look is cheerful but rough. But hey! A makeover is a makeover.

Long Island Restaurant. 1689 Church (at 29th St.), S.F. (415) 695-7678/79. Daily: 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Beer and wine. MasterCard, Visa. Not noisy. Wheelchair accessible.