Deep in the heart of Los Angeles

Yee-haw, if you’ll pardon the expression. I’m just back from Western Smoke House, a little place that leaves no doubt where it’s coming from. The neon sign shows a kickin’ cowgirl. The interior is cluttered with longhorns, armadillos, saddles, horseshoes, Lone Star Beer posters and the obligatory “Don’t Mess With Texas” sign. In the parking lot there’s usually a truck painted with the words “Caterin’ Service.”

Mostly it serves Southern barbecue of the Texas persuasion -- long-smoked meats and substantial side dishes, with a bit of a specialty in beef -- but the menu is surprisingly broad. The catering operation is even more ambitious, rife with smoked duck in apricot-tequila glaze and turkey roulade stuffed with leeks. We probably have the catering side of the operation to thank for the very good desserts.

The heart of the menu is the smoked meats, which show a lot of time in a smoke pit by the ring of pink just below the surface of the meat, though they don’t have a strongly smoky flavor. The spectacular beef ribs taste like the browned surface of roast beef, plus a little spiciness (I’m sure I taste cumin) as well as a bit of smoke. The excellent pork ribs are quite meaty and moist. There’s a garlicky, medium-hot sausage, filling the same role as Elgin sausage would at a barbecue in Texas, though it’s made of beef and less rich and fine-textured.

The brisket is beefy and perfectly moist, but it tends to have a flat, baked sort of taste, and I wouldn’t put it in the same league as the ribs. The barbecue meatloaf is a simple but effective version that seems to be all beef. The turkey breast has virtually no smoke flavor at all.

The meats always come with a homemade sauce. The hot version is not terribly hot, but if you do want your food terribly hot, there’s a sort of bottled hot sauce bar on a wooden crate next to the display counter.

Dinner platters, which include some combo options, come with a choice of two sides. These include good sweet potato fries with butter and brown sugar, a basic baked sweet potato and a potato salad of the style that’s halfway to mashed potatoes (there are actual mashed potatoes too, flavored with a bit too much pickle juice). There are also good collards, scarcely bitter at all, and a sloppy but pleasant dish of smothered cabbage, onions and peppers with a bit of mustard flavor. The baked beans are flavored with the restaurant’s hot sauce. The most avant-garde side is spinach sauteed with plenty of garlic and topped with ribbons of raw carrot.

Barbecue sandwiches are served with the meat and the bread (a grilled French roll, in this case) separate. They come with a choice of one of the side dishes plus the beans. There are also a couple of nontraditional specialty sandwiches, such as smoked turkey with grilled eggplant and Parmesan.

Skip it and get the excellent barbecue burger, I say. The patty -- made oblong to fit the French roll -- is not rich and greasy in the usual barbecue hamburger style but dense and chewy and sweet, as if made from beef trimmings ground in a food processor, maybe with a little onion in it. It comes with romaine lettuce, onions, pickles and tomatoes. Mustard, ketchup and mayonnaise bottles appear on the table, and a little cup of barbecue sauce, but it works fine with no sauce at all.

Violating every principle of Southern barbecue, Western Smoke House actually has a short appetizer list, which includes a couple of good ones -- sweet potato chips, fried onions (in Tony Roma style: threads of onion dredged in flour and fried brown) and sweet batter-fried eggplant slices with an irresistible chipotle-spiked ranch dressing.

The menu lists about 10 desserts, though only a handful are likely to be on hand. They’re remarkably good for a barbecue. The Southern banana pudding is made with vanilla wafers and fresh whipped cream, the peach cobbler has a good, fresh crust. The Key lime pie is nothing of the sort -- it’s a lime cream pie, but devilishly good, and piled about 4 inches high in the middle. Might as well call it a Texas lime pie.

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Western Smoke House

Location: 10640 Woodbine St., Los Angeles, (310) 837-3544.

Price: Appetizers, $3.25 to $7.99; sandwiches, $6.99 to $8.50; main dishes, $8.99 to $16.99; desserts, $3.99 to $4.50.

Best dishes: Southern fried eggplant, beef rib dinner, pork rib dinner, smoked chicken dinner, barbecue burger, sweet potato fries, spinach with carrots and garlic, fried onions, peach cobbler, Key lime pie.

Details: Open 11:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday, closed Sunday. No alcohol. Small parking lot, street parking. Cash only.