JOHNNY'S SPICED WITH LIFE -- AND GARLIC

There's Johnny Brazil, the Sonoma County cowboy; ''Johnny Angel,'' the '60s

song; Johnny Rotten, the punk rocker, and now, for your dining pleasure,

there's Johnny Garlic's.

Johnny Garlic's is subtitled, ''Full Flavored Food,'' and there's certainly

no stinting on the garlic -- which is good, for besides being a delicious

food, garlic has beneficial effects on the circulatory system. The five cooks

in toques that you can see working away in the kitchen must be the healthiest

guys in Sonoma County.

This is the cuisine that was pioneered a decade ago by The Stinking Rose in

North Beach in San Francisco, the first all-garlic restaurant that I ever

encountered. The Stinking Rose is still going strong, and, judging from the

crowds waiting to be seated, I'll bet that Johnny Garlic's is still going

strong some years from now, too.

The guy at the table next to mine offered a theory as to why the place was

jammed on a Sunday night, with people waiting eight deep at the doorway.

''The food doesn't even have to be good,'' he told me. ''You get big crowds

if you have lots of enthusiastic young people on staff, making the place

fun.''

Well, the place -- formerly the somber Baggio's off Farmer's Lane -- is

staffed with enthusiastic young people who obviously love their work. ''The

owners are sweeties,'' says the young woman who greets you when you enter,

referring to owners Steve Gruber and Guy Fieri, two restaurateurs with 30

years of combined experience.

It still looks pretty much as it did when it was Baggio's, except the

interior is spiffed up with some nice airbrushed graphics of garlic bulbs and

a new paint job. Jars of pickled garlic bulbs and dry bulbs sit here and there

around the room, which has a stretch of bayed windows that overlook the lights

of traffic negotiating the corner of Farmer's Lane and Highway 12.

The wait staff is young, brisk, friendly and efficient -- and when a

waitress saw our table loaded with more dishes than we three people would

normally have been eating (ah, the life of a restaurant reviewer), she said,

''Great! That's how people should be eating here at Johnny Garlic's. Lots of

everything.'' Garlic to excess!

The 25 wines on the wine list are well-selected. Five of the best wines on

the list -- Piper Sonoma Blanc de Noirs, Landmark ''Overlook'' Chardonnay,

1994 Limerick Lane ''Collins Vineyard'' Zinfandel, 1994 Benziger Merlot and

1993 Cain Cellars ''Cain Cuvee'' Bordeaux blend -- are available by the bottle

only, but the other 21 wines are offered by glass or bottle. They include some

peachy wines, such as the 1995 Swan ''Cotes du Rosa,'' the 1994 McDowell Syrah

and the 1995 Paradise Ridge Sauvignon Blanc. The prices are moderate for all

these wines.

Dan Dawson, who chose the wines, has written out some helpful pairings of

his selections with some of the dishes served here, and included them on a

separate sheet in the menu. He suggests the Wild Hog Pinot Noir with the penne

arrabbiata, and the J. Fritz Chardonnay with the fire-roasted corn and shrimp

quesadilla, to give a couple of examples.

Tables are spartan, with just white butcher paper and salt and pepper

shakers. Bready, hot, crispy-cheesy focaccia arrives, and then the waitress

brings a bottle of olive oil to the table. The place is loud with the chatter

of diners and barely-audible music, lively, full of life and fun. It's a good

place to bring the children.

Roasted garlic bulb with goat cheese salsa. $2.95 **

The garlic bulb was roasted just shy of done, so some of the garlic was

still hard rather than mushy. It came with a good tomato dice laced with basil

and crumbly goat cheese, served on toast points burnt black and bitter on the

edges.

Polynesian coconut bread shrimp. $5.95 ***

Four shrimp dipped in a sweet coconut batter were deep-fried a bit too

hard, then given an orange tropical dipping sauce that's like a loose, sweet

marmalade. It's a dish youngsters will love.

''Johnny Garlic's Famous Garlic Potato Chips.'' $2.50 *

How these can be famous when the place just opened a few weeks ago, I don't

know. Nor do I know why they'd be famous, since they were thick-cut potato

slices cooked to a hard crack, making them a chore to eat. They were given a

little garlic flavoring and a hint of spiciness.

Cream of roasted garlic soup. Cup. $2.50 ***

A tasty, light stock was the base for this creamy, delicious roasted garlic

soup, given a handful of large garlic-Parmesan croutons. The texture was

semithick, and the flavor sweet and garlicky. A good cup of soup at a good

price.

Johnny Garlic's Famous Caesar. Small. $3.50 **

Lots of shredded, outer leaves of romaine lettuce -- the dark green,

tougher leaves dotted with large garlic croutons. The Caesar sauce was a

workmanlike effort, good and creamy, with a flavor of roasted garlic, but no

anchovies that I could detect (and I do love anchovies in my Caesar).

Linguini with chipotle-lime grilled shrimp. $10.50 **

The spicy heat was provided by chipotle peppers, a welcome wake-up call to

the taste buds. The shrimp were nicely butterflied and grilled, and topped the

ginger-lime cream sauce dotted with fresh chopped Roma tomatoes, scallions and

bits of capacolla. The drawback, of course, was the pool of amber oil in which

all of this is drowning.

Chili citrus salsa chicken. $8.95 ***

The two pieces of chicken breast were soaked overnight in a sweet citrus

and spicy chili marinade, then grilled to just a whit past juicy but not quite

dry. Still, very good chicken. Great garlic mashed potatoes -- so darn

garlicky that when I opened my refrigerator the next day, the cloud of garlic

fragrance that emerged from the leftover potatoes brought me up abruptly. But

that's quite all right and just what I expect from a place called Johnny

Garlic's. The chicken came with grilled green peppers and carrots and a fine

spicy chipotle and onion salsa.

Johnny Garlic's classic California-style pizza. $5.95 **

Well, the price is right even if the pizza isn't. A limp and underdone

crust was given a little Parmesan and mozzarella cheese, some fresh basil

shreds, chopped fresh garlic and several dark red lumps of sundried tomatoes

that were hard to eat. Nobody at the table, including the 12-year-old, liked

this pizza. There are other California pizzas on the menu, plus New Yorkstyle

pizza, available with thin, medium and Neopolitan-style crusts, so you may

want to sample around to find one you like.

Cheesecake. $3.95 **

The graham cracker crust held three levels of fun: cheesecake on the

bottom, a white cream cheese above that, and a lemon curd on top. Good, if

ordinary, cheesecake.

Tiramisu. $3.95 ***

A light and floaty tiramisu, nicely put together, with good flavors of

mascarpone cheese, lady fingers and liqueur. So many versions of this classic

Italian dessert are either dry and characterless and or heavy and dense that

it's a real pleasure to find one this well made.

Jeff Cox, author of nine books on food, wine and gardening, writes a weekly

restaurant review column for The Press Democrat.