THEY’RE TAKING SOME TASTY LIBERTIES WITH THIS MODERATE FARE

Several people have recommended America to me--the restaurant called America, that is--and I think I can see why. It’s a pleasant, casual sort of place, serving healthy portions at reasonable prices. And who couldn’t have fun in a room dominated by the copper-green head of Miss Liberty?

As a restaurant, it even has a couple of interesting new wrinkles. The pizzas come from a mesquite-fired (meaning good and hot) brick oven, and for a little fun at your table you can indulge your power fantasies by making calls on a cordless phone. In addition to an oyster bar and a salad bar, there’s a “chocoholic bar” presided over by the be-antlered head of a so-called “chocolate moose.”

Come to think of it, there’s also a chocolate dessert bar at Anthony’s Pier 2, and the matchbook in the ashtray was from Anthony’s. What’s interesting is not that Anthony’s owns America, but that America still doesn’t have its own matches about four months after opening. Also, the oyster bar items, which are available all day, have their prices listed on a page headed Lunch Menu. That provides an early clue. There’s a certain flakiness about this place, a sense that it doesn’t quite have its socks pulled up and its shirttail tucked in.

One day at lunch, for example, after slogging through the salad bar, where not everything was of the first freshness--the chopped celery was turning white at the edges and the carrot-raisin salad was limp and slimy--I went back to my table and sat dazed for a couple of minutes as the restaurant lighting mysteriously flashed on and off. At another meal, the waitress removed a salad plate and we found a startling, vivid splotch of beet juice on the tablecloth. The plate had a pinprick hole that somehow had never been detected.

More seriously, that same night the kitchen was having real trouble following orders. When the waitress brought our entrees, one of our orders was missing. She apologetically told us that it hadn’t been cooked. We had ordered it for a friend who hadn’t arrived yet, and, conceivably, somebody may have decided that she wasn’t coming and the entree wouldn’t be needed. But that was no excuse. We had explicitly told the waitress that we wanted it even if our friend didn’t show up.

It was a Sunday and probably the regular chef’s night off. I’d like to believe that because my 28-ounce T-bone steak, which I’d ordered medium, came blood rare. When I pointed this out and asked whether it could be put on the fire a little more, it came back a long, long way past medium, gray and tasteless all the way through.

The missing order turned out to be well worth the wait: breast of free-range chicken with a rich, buttery crab filling. The filling is evidently the same that comes in an appetizer of crab and mushroom caps, also a buttery treat. The pizzas from the brick oven are very good, too, but don’t expect any smokiness from the mesquite, which is merely there to heat the bricks. These are individual-size pizzas with a choice of thick or thin crust and (this is pretty American) thick slatherings of topping--cheese and Italian sausage is the standard but more exotic toppings are found on the pizza of the day. Most of the listed menu items are fish (daily selections) and they are all competently grilled with plenty of mesquite flavor, though whether that’s a plus or not is for the individual diner to decide.

So a lot of things aren’t flaky at all. But the ceviche appetizer, supposedly a dish of raw fish “cooked” by the acidity of lemon juice, is scarcely lemony at all--just raw fish with salsa. The clam chowder is a bland, starchy job of work, heavy on the potatoes. Blackened halibut, on special one night, was tasty but dry as hay, with nothing liquid on the plate to help you out, just a menagerie of baby and/or julienned vegetables.

And I’d just like to say a word about the sharing, or rather no-sharing, policy. It’s kind of chilling to look at a menu and see an injunction against generous impulses, specifically among the soups and salads (No Sharing) and the chocolate dessert bar (No Sharing), and the policy with regard to lobster (Sharing Charge $10) doesn’t encourage you to let your hair down and whoop it up. They have to think of a more graceful way to explain their policies. After all, they’ve appealed to our patriotic feelings by calling the place America, and this here is a free country.

As I’ve said, the prices are moderate. At lunch, soups and salads run $1.95 to $5.95, entrees $4.50 to $8.95. Dinner entrees are $6.95-$12.95 (not counting lobster, price set daily), with a couple of side dishes like yam fries or baked potato at $2.95. At either meal a visit to the salad bar, oyster bar or chocoholic bar is $3.95 with a meal, $5.95 without (except for salad bar without meal, which is $6.95).

AMERICA

4250 Martingale Way, Newport Beach

(714) 833-0080

Open for lunch Monday through Friday, for dinner nightly. American Express, MasterCard and Visa accepted.