EASTERN STANDARD TIME AT BURBANK EATERY, AMERICAN FARE MIXES WITH AMPLE ITALIAN CREATIONS.

Byline: Larry Lipson Restaurant Critic

THE REPLACEMENT for Piero's, the longtime Italian seafood restaurant near NBC in Burbank, is a pasta, sandwich and salad cafe with an Italian accent called the East Coast Bar & Grill.

The physical remake has the old-fashioned red booths gone (supplanted by black upholstered ones) and a completely new, more open, airy look to the main dining room, which contains the bar.

There's new carpet, also new furnishings, and the former wine-shop area is now an adjacent dining room with a large-screen television at one end.

The East Coast connection isn't that apparent, although if you look hard enough you'll find a couple of Philly cheese steak sandwiches, Montreal brisket pastrami, Maryland-style crab cakes and a New York steak - plenty of these on the West Coast - on the menu.

It's a neat, clean place with a staff that really tries to please.

But somehow, after two dinner visits, I believe its overall fare is more suited to lunch than dinner. Noticeably, East Coast's bill of fare is dominated by 22 sandwich (including burgers) listings.

The kitchen makes a decent chicken soup (cup $2.95, bowl $4.50) with vegetables that you can have with rice, noodles or a matzo ball.

And from the salad selection, baby spinach leaves with bacon, chopped egg, mushrooms and your choice of dressing ($8.95) is a refreshing diversion that's big enough to serve as a light entree with grilled salmon for an extra $4.05.

Baked brie with roasted garlic and pine nuts ($7.95) is probably the best of the appetizers, and there's a quartet of smallish crab cakes ($8.95) that rate as passable.

Mozzarella marinara ($5.95) looks like it's made in a factory, though it may not be, but Buffalo wings ($6.95) with a creamy cheesy dip are as good as most renditions around town.

The ``house-made'' gnocchi ($12.95), soft, but a mite floury, turns out to be from somebody else's house, a purveyor named Pasta Mia.

The aforementioned New York steak ($18.95), a three-quarter pound steak of reasonable thickness, tenderness, moistness and flavor, regularly comes with vegetables and potato. But one night it was an impressive special at $14.95 with excellent, oversize onion rings.

Lamb shank ($14.95) emerges as a respectable version coated generously with a savory vegetable sauce, but veal piccata ($14.50) could be a lot tenderer.

From the listing of eight regular entrees, perhaps the second choice after the steak here would be a dish called chicken ``champanola'' ($13.95), an unfamiliar name that translates into skinless chicken breast stuffed with spinach and cheese in a rich, mushroom marsala sauce. It's served with nicely executed mashed potatoes and crunchy green beans.

Dinner plates filled with food to the edges ensure that nobody leaves hungry.

Desserts are minimal, generally not more than two, among them a festive, Christmas-like ginger cake and the ubiquitous tiramisu.

Perhaps the ghosts of Piero's are ruling the kitchen here. But for obvious reasons, more traditional American grill items are expected from a restaurant titled East Coast Bar & Grill.

EAST COAST BAR & GRILL

Food: Two stars. Wine: One star. Service: Three stars.

Where: 2825 W. Olive Ave., Burbank.

Hours: Open for lunch only from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Mondays; for lunch, dinner and snacks from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays; for dinner only from 5 to 10 p.m. Saturdays.

Recommended items: Baked brie, chicken soup, spinach salad, chicken champanola, New York steak, lamb shank, ginger cake.

How much: Starters from $3 to $10, salads and sandwiches from $3.75 to $13, entrees and pastas from $9 to $19. Full bar. All major credit cards.

Wine list: Extremely limited selection at present. Corkage: $5.

Reservations: Helpful. Call [phone].

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Photo:

(1 -- 2) Chef Rudolfo Garcia, left, owner Randy Ladd and waitress Sherry Albrecht present some of the specialties at East Coast Bar & Grill in Burbank, including a spinich salad and grilled salmon dish with melon slices.

Charlotte Schmid-Maybach/Staff Photographer