RESTAURANTS/Max Jacobson : Scents, Sights of Soup Bars Tease Customers Into a Feeding Frenzy

I haven’t figured out if more is better yet, but at Soup Exchange and Salmagundi I’ve certainly had the chance to think about it. These two gleaming, brightly scrubbed and brilliantly conceived “soup bars,” as they dub themselves, abound with visual, olfactory and taste sensations designed to entice their customers into a feeding frenzy. And judging from how full people’s trays are after having run the gauntlet of soups, salads, muffins and desserts, the concept succeeds magically. Modesty, thy name is not “soup bar.”

Salmagundi is by far the more upscale of the two, even though it looks like Romper Room with steam tables: Its walls are decorated with multicolored squiggles that only a child could interpret. But its kitchen puts out grown-up food and lots of it.

The Salmagundi concept had its beginnings on San Francisco’s Geary Boulevard in the early ‘70s: Basically, the intent was to provide a simple alternative to fast food. Then, as now, you could get a large crock of home-style soup, a fresh salad with fresh-made dressing, fresh bread and a beverage, all at a reasonable price. What made it fun was the vast, ever-changing selection of exotic soups available.

That hasn’t changed. Salmagundi still makes all its soups from scratch; there are three special soups daily on a rotating schedule that changes monthly and most are excellent.

A thick, robust lentil-and-sausage soup was my favorite, but also impressive were a light Greek egg lemon, a deli-style mushroom barley and something called Grant Avenue chicken, named for the street that runs through San Francisco’s Chinatown and filled with diced Oriental vegetables and chunked chicken meat.

I didn’t care for the Italian sausage soup (too much sage, too little sausage) or the Chinese vegetable (watery in texture from an overindulgence of bean sprouts). But there are dozens more to choose from including tortilla, minestrone, wild rice, country Cheddar and even Salmagundi, the restaurant’s namesake, which is a hodgepodge of meats and vegetables.

Beyond soup, things get more complicated. You can get a good Caesar salad, for an extra charge; otherwise you get some crisp greens with a choice of dressings. But it’s hard to get through the line without piling your tray with the other goodies available, which in the modern era includes items the old Salmagundi never had: Specialty salads of smoked chicken or calamary are plentiful, as are quiches du jour , sandwiches and even hot dogs on buns.

Further complicating matters is an irresistible, all-you-can-eat dessert bar, which is probably the best deal the restaurant has to offer. It consists, among other things, of vanilla frozen yogurt, hot fudge, butterscotch and caramel sauces, cookie crumbs, trail mix, Swiss almonds, strawberries, pine apple, whipped cream and sides of homemade bread pudding, trifle, apple brown Betty and chocolate mousse. Adieu , simple life.

The only knock on Salmagundi is that many of these distractions are a la carte. It’s best to stick with the daily special. If you don’t, you may find that by the time you get through the line, the price is almost as hefty as your tray.

You won’t have that problem at the sterile, efficiently layed out Soup Exchange. Like Disneyland, you pay only one price for fantasy, and also like Disneyland, reality hits hard with long lines and average food. You don’t get the trendy selection Salmagundi offers, but you do get extreme value.

This is the kind of place where you can learn a lot about people by watching them pile up their plates. Some are fastidious, some are practical, some are health conscious, some are greedy. Some people I observed looked as if their objective was to taste everything on their first trip through the line, fine for salads, but definitely dicey when it comes to soups.

A preferred method: Fill your bowl, and when you want another soup, get another bowl. I enjoyed a fine, cumin-spiked chili and an excellent cream of broccoli, but none of the other three soups that day hit the mark. Vegetable beef was forgettable. And the chicken noodle might as well have been canned.

The salad bar is better stocked. All the veggies you’d imagine are there along with a few you wouldn’t, such as marinated mushrooms, red pepper and red onion. Dressings also are fine, such as honey mustard, ranch and a subtly sweet chilled bacon for the spinach leaves. All the lettuces and other produce were cold and crisp.

It’s a different story when it comes to prepared salads, though. This is where the franchises tend to be at their weakest. Fumi salad, an attempt to bring an Oriental flare to the buffet, fails miserably. The noodles are flaccid, and too much sesame oil ruins the dressing. Chicken pasta with tarragon isn’t bad, but coleslaw and carrot salads are far too sweet, and the three-bean salad is just awful. It doesn’t help matters that you can see the giant industrial cans the beans came from inside the kitchen when you go to pay.

Stick to the nacho bar if you want exotic: It’s a good idea with fresh guacamole, salsa, and shredded cheese. I went back twice.

You also get fresh muffins, good ones such as blueberry and date, and there is a small dessert bar with frozen yogurt and a few toppings, plus that white fluffy fruit coconut mixture called ambrosia. Why is this stuff on every buffet from Maine to Alaska? Nobody eats it. I may have figured it: It’s there because nobody eats it. Abstinence is good for self-esteem.

Both restaurants are inexpensive. The daily special at Salmagundi is $5.25. Baked onion soup is $3.75. Specialty salads are $2.95. Just Dessert, the dessert bar, is $1.95 with lunch or dinner, $1.25 with the daily special and $3.25 a la carte. The combination soup and salad bar at Soup Exchange restaurants is $5.95 at lunch, $6.75 at dinner.

Salmagundi is at South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa, (714) 549-9267. It is open Monday through Saturday 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. and Sundays from noon to 5 p.m.

Soup Exchange has four Orange County locations: 151 E. Orangethorpe Ave., Fullerton, (714) 992-5522; 16300 Beach Blvd., Huntington Beach, (714) 842-2421; San Diego Freeway at Seal Beach Blvd., Seal Beach, (213) 430-4644; Culver Drive at Barranca Parkway, Irvine, (714) 551-2113. All are open 11 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. daily.