Enjoy fresh-baked pastries and more at Natas in Sherman Oaks

The number or Portuguese restaurants in Southern California can be counted on just a couple of fingers on one hand.

Far as I can tell, there’s the newish Portuguese/Cal Cuisine concept called Caldo Verde in the Proper Hotel in downtown Los Angeles. And even more notably, there’s Natas Pastries, a Portuguese café and restaurant in Sherman Oaks, which has been around since 2005, making it downright prehistoric in local terms. And for all that time, it’s been semi-hidden in an easy-to-miss space next to Casa Vega, which is where I take visitors from out of town. I like to keep Natas a special treat for me.

It was born, as the website tells us, when Lisbon native Fatima Marques went searching for her beloved pastéis de nata. Unable to find this addictive crème brûlée custard in a puff pastry shell anywhere, she decided to make her own. And on June 10 of that year, she opened Natas Pastries, which five years later became a full-service sit-down restaurant.

It’s still dominated by pastries; several dozen are listed on the menu, including half a dozen Portuguese empanadas. What Willy Wonka is to chocolate, Fatima Marques is to natas — a word that refers to the cream filling that dominates many of her sweets. And, of course, a warm weekend afternoon spent on the outdoor patio at Natas can easily be occupied with a meal of pastries, and a tasty cappuccino. But then, you’d be missing one of the most extensive Portuguese menus this side of Lisbon, a land where feijoada rules. And bacalhau raises your sodium level in a very tasty way.

Portugal has been in, at least, my consciousness for a while now. A recent front-page newspaper story detailed the flood of Americans who have opted to leave the US of A for Lisbon, Porto and any number of smaller cities along the Portuguese coast, as a destination where they could escape…well, pretty much everything. The lifestyle is quiet, the prices lower, the shootings nonexistent. It reminds me of the way locals were moving to Costa Rica a decade ago. At least, they were till crime against expats became epidemic.

And this Portuguese exodus really came into focus when a neighbor announced they were going there for a month to look for property. They reported the expat community was filled with true believers, who believed they had found paradise with an incomprehensible language. (My neighbors returned with a down payment made on a property in a small town, where one of them, a musician, planned to study the local guitar style called fado.)

And it was with them that I went to Natas Pastries to eat piri-piri. And talk about life in the slow lane.

It doesn’t really matter when you show up, since the breakfast, the lunch and the dinner menus are all served from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Which means you can have gambas a alho and empadao first thing in the morning…and bananas Foster french toast and a breakfast burrito the last thing at night. I like that; breakfast being a morning-only meal never made much sense to me. And who wouldn’t like some spaghetti a Portuguesa to begin the day — angel hair pasta tossed with Portuguese ground sauce, tomatoes and mushrooms.

The breakfast menu is pretty straight forward American — pancakes, eggs, French toast, waffles, crêpes. Though you can add on sides like baked potatoes with aioli, shrimp & bacon-saffron fried rice, Portuguese cheese and Portuguese chourico sausage too.

Lunch is about half and half, with options like a tuna sandwich and a hummus-veggie panini. But there’s also grilled chicken breast with that piri-piri garlic sauce, a meat-and-cheese sandwich called “Francesinha” (the cheese is described as “molten”!), an atún con grão salad, and a salada de polvo (octopus). There’s also caldo verde, a soup of mashed spuds and kale. And a 10-veggie soup called sopa de pedra.

And then the options go Deep Lisbon, with a quarter of a bacalhau (salt cold) dishes, a dazzling bouillabaisse like seafood soup called caldeirada, a couple of chourico sausage dishes and — what fun! — both a platter of imported Portuguese cheeses, and homemade Portuguese empanadas. But then, for me, in the end, it’s always the pastries that call out to me.

My friends observed that in Portugal, locals and expats all spent hours lounging at the table. With so many tasty baked items, I can see beginning my meal in the morning…and not finishing till much later in the day — though without trying to speak Portuguese. The food is a lot easier to eat than the names of the dishes are to pronounce.

Merrill Shindler is a Los Angeles-based freelance dining critic. Email mreats@aol.com.

Natas Pastries

• Rating: 3 stars
• Address: 13317 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks
• Information: 818-788-8050, www.nataspastries.com
• Cuisine: Portuguese/American/Continental and pastries
• When: Breakfast, lunch and dinner, Friday through Sunday (all served all day)
• Details: Beer and wine; reservations important
• Atmosphere: This is the rarest of restaurants in the Los Angeles area – a Portuguese café (and more), which spends much of the week as a pastry and coffee shop, and transforms on the weekend.
• Prices: $20-$35 per person
• On the menu: 21 Breakfasts, with dozens of options ($11.95-$15.95), 19 Lunch Dishes ($13.95-$24.95), 2 Soups ($7.95-$8.95), 8 Dinner Appetizers ($8.75-$21.95), 15 Dinner Entrees ($19.95-$32.95)
• Credit cards: MC, V
• What the stars mean: 4 (World class! Worth a trip from anywhere!), 3 (Most excellent, even exceptional. Worth a trip from anywhere in Southern California.), 2 (A good place to go for a meal. Worth a trip from anywhere in the neighborhood.) 1 (If you’re hungry, and it’s nearby, but don’t get stuck in traffic going.) 0 (Honestly, not worth writing about.)