Restaurants : FIRST IMPRESSIONS

It all started on the farm. Apples and beans and carrots once grew in happy harmony--until the era of one-crop farming came along. The modern farmer doesn’t diversify, he puts all his eggs in a single basket, and so the countryside is becoming covered with endless acres sprouting a single fruit or vegetable.

Suddenly the urban landscape is starting to look somewhat similar. We now have one-crop shopping. It wasn’t so bad when you kept tripping over doughnut places, but then the cookie shops took to the streets. Suddenly it seemed that pastry shops were a thing of the past--too diverse--and everybody who baked wanted to specialize. We got bagel bakeries and muffin makers and pie places. Even the ice cream parlors took to specializing: The gelato purveyors wouldn’t touch tofutti, and neither of them would have anything at all to do with frozen yogurt.

On one Beverly Hills street you can find Mrs. Field’s Cookies, All My Muffins and Mike and Billy’s Pie Shop huddled together. On another street you find a bakery dedicated to bread, and there seem to be dozens of croissanterias.

But when they opened Gena’s Brownies (9480 Dayton Way, Beverly Hills, (213) 274-4046) last week, it occurred to me that specialization simply had gone too far. A shop that sells nothing but brownies?

They may be very good brownies--they are very good brownies--but a bad brownie is hard to make. The last time I baked them, I clocked myself at six minutes flat (not counting the baking time)--and I find it hard to understand why anyone would feel the need to walk into a fancy new emporium and pay $1.65 for a brownie. You don’t even get to lick the bowl.