WHEN DAVID WOLFE SAYS HE he wants Table, his new enterprise in Venice, to be a neighborhood restaurant, he means it. The building was previously part of the Electric Avenue Railway system (and boasts a 100-year-old Douglas fir plank floor), A local ceramist cast the bowls and plates. A nearby furniture maker made the communal table in the upstairs dining room that can seat 15. The vegetables are from the Santa Monica Farmers Market. A cook skateboards to work. Can you get more Venice than that?

Wolfe’s original ambition was to be a classical pianist, and he studied at Cal State Northridge and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. You can occasionally hear Glenn Gould’s recordings of Bach’s Goldberg Variations wafting through the rooms. His culinary career has been somewhat more serendipitous. His first job was working as the estate chef for department store heir and Interscope founder Ted Field. This got him a Gelson’s card for raw materials and a staff to experiment on. Film location catering, his next gig, gave him assurance but proved unchallenging when he realized that the grips would be happy eating meat loaf every day. He learned line cooking at his first restaurant, 2424 Pico—now the location of Josie—and then spent a year and a half as chef at the Beach House in Santa Monica Canyon. Driving by the abandoned Van Gogh’s Ear last winter, he used a pay phone by the entrance to call the real estate agent.

Table sits near the corner where Main Street swoops into Abbot Kinney Boulevard. It’s a block that feels in between, having neither the offbeat boutiques nor the advertising hot shops with their private hoop courts that bloom around Abbot Kinney. Here an MTA bus depot is the main presence, though lofts are being constructed on the site formerly occupied by Roger Corman’s studio. These will invariably bring bustle, but right now what makes cars stop is Wolfe’s cooking.

The style is maddeningly difficult to categorize. Is it Moroccan? No, but he makes a terrific couscous. Is it Asian or fusion? No again. He uses yu choy—the heads of bok choy—simply because they’re the best greens in the market. Is it Mexican? You couldn’t really say that, despite the brilliant deployment of a guajillo chile-nectarine sauce on the flatiron steak. American, then? Yet another no. However, while eating his barbecued short rib sandwich on a toasted Pioneer bakery roll, “The Star-Spangled Banner” played in my head.

Wolfe, whose liquor license is pending, can often be spotted in the tiny kitchen cooking in shorts, and that article of clothing might best capture his style. You cook in shorts when you're relaxed and into the process. You take a little bit of this and a little bit of that. We've all done it at home. You put on some Glenn Gould and try a few variations of your own.