I once spent a week tailing the band Hanson, three teenage boys who had grown up on an island where the only pop available to them was from Time Life rock'n' roll anthologies, 1957-69. And the music they made reflected it -- their songs were the products of people who had thought deeply about Bobby Darin but had never heard Led Zeppelin or LL Cool J. And sometimes I think about Hanson when I'm sitting down to dinner at Kismet, the new quasi-Middle Eastern restaurant on Los Feliz's southern edge. It's not because the sleek dining room is old-fashioned -- the plant-filled Midcentury Modern groove could not be more present-day Los Angeles -- or because its customers, who all look like recent Wesleyan grads, are anything less than yoga-toned and chic. The menu, surpassingly light and vegetable-intensive, has the carefully layered flavors, the touches of heat, tartness and herbal intensity that we have grown to expect from the best new kitchens. The aesthetic of co-chefs Sara Kramer and Sarah Hymanson, whom you may know from Madcapra in Grand Central Market if not from their former restaurant Glasserie out by Brooklyn's Pulaski Bridge, is up-to-date: the tahini is made with sunflower seeds, the dining room smells of za'atar, and Aleppo pepper flows like water.