All Aboard at TRAXX

When I heard a new restaurant had opened in Union Station downtown, I was thrilled. I pictured taking my mother to the train station and spending an hour or so over dinner, finishing just in time to board her train. I pictured the station’s former Fred Harvey Restaurant come to life again. I got it wrong: That is slated to happen, but further down the line.

The new TRAXX is a modest restaurant in yet another spot, to one side of the main concourse. The Art Deco-inspired dining room is as narrow as a dining car, but with tables outside edging onto the concourse and others on the north patio. It can seat about 100. And as soon as it’s completed, there will be a separate bar across the concourse in the station’s old telephone room.

The chef in the bright head-scarf working at the open kitchen in back is Tara Thomas, former chef/co-owner of 410 Boyd, the neighborhood hangout for the downtown art scene. For TRAXX, she’s devised a California-eclectic menu of small and large plates. Open just a couple of weeks, the kitchen is still getting up to speed. On a very slow night, the food is so long coming my mother’s train would have left before we ever got our main courses.

Thompson is a chef with a generous impulse, one who can’t resist adding just one more element to the plate. Even her “small plates” aren’t really so small. A bowl of steamed Manila clams in a tame Thai red curry broth could make a light lunch or supper. The soup that night, an earthy puree of parsnips and celery, is decorated with a splash of crimson beet juice. Her crab cakes are meaty and come two to an order with a chipotle chile remoulade with a nice, fiery bite.

Main courses are served in oversized, wide-rimmed bowls, not the ideal shape for cutting into steak or lamb chops. Or the huge pork chop stuffed with prosciutto and rosemary, and served with dabs of sweet potato polenta and cranberry chutney. For dessert, she makes an outrageously rich pecan pie.

As we eat, a couple laden with suitcases come in and set them down next to a table. A security guard stops by to look over the menu. And three little girls in pigtails with their mother at a table outside in the concourse sip sodas in tall glasses, wide-eyed.

BE THERE

TRAXX Restaurant at Union Station, 800 N. Alameda St., Los Angeles; (213) 625-1999. Open for lunch Monday through Friday; for dinner Monday through Saturday. Valet and self-parking. Small plates at lunch, $5.25 to $9.25; sandwiches, $9.50 to $10.50; lunch entrees, $13 to $17; small plates at dinner, $6.50 to $9; dinner, $14.50 to $17.50.