RESTAURANT REVIEW : Chilean Place Is Likable Letdown : La Gaviota de Vina: Dishes range from delicious to disappointing and the service is sluggish, but it’s a place you’d like to like.

Most of the time, I’m pretty clear about whether I like a restaurant, but every now and then I have trouble making up my mind. This happens, it seems, when I want very badly to like a place.

I really wanted to like La Gaviota de Vina, a new Chilean restaurant that has replaced the Red Rooster, a Yugoslavian restaurant on Van Nuys Boulevard. Anybody would want to like this restaurant, which looks almost the same as it did during its Red Rooster era. (I’d wanted to like the Red Rooster, too, so this dilemma might well come with the setting.) It’s a modest, pretty dining room, with comfortable gray banquettes and shell-pink walls adorned with old musical instruments. La Gaviota’s proprietors added black and white photographs of Chile, so that you can gaze at haunting Easter Island statues and the Chilean Ocean. I walked in for the first time and was charmed.

My first meal there did little to discourage my high hopes. The ceviche, made with sea bass and little pink clams, was spicy and refreshing at the same time. And my own grandmother couldn’t have made a more nourishing and hearty stew than the cazuela de vacuno , a clear broth with short ribs, potatoes, corn and carrots. The “Albacore Danny,” described as swordfish sauteed in butter, was a mediocre cut of fish dressed to good advantage in a light tomato sauce; it wasn’t nearly as compelling as the major mountain of mashed potatoes that came on the same plate. Yet all told, in that pretty room, with pretty good, reasonably priced food, we had a pretty good time. I looked forward to coming back.

The second time I went with my friend Robert who, being very hungry, wanted to like the place as much as I did. We started with the abalone salsa verde , rounds of the shellfish topped with onions and cilantro on a bland potato salad. Neither one of us had ever had abalone that was so soft or tasted quite so . . . so tinny. I asked the waitress point-blank if it was canned. “Oh, yes,” she said. “You can’t get fresh abalone around here.”

Next, we tried the Arrollado de Malaya , which is a flank steak roll containing chard, carrots and hard-boiled eggs: a pretty dish, it tasted exactly like dinner leftovers. From there, we went on to the parrillada “Juan Chico,” a mixed grill for two that came to the table on a nifty barbecue. This was a meal dreamed up by a true carnivore for others of his/her ilk: There were short ribs and skirt steak, sweetbreads and knotty ropes of tripe and dark spicy blood sausages. We countered the all-meat meal with bites of the Chilena salad (tomatoes and onions) and pepino con tomate (tomatoes and cucumber), which were both made with tasteless, grainy, oblong Italian tomatoes.

We finished up with a good light flan and coffee--easier said than done because at some point during dinner our waitress vanished.

By the end of my second visit. I was beginning to have divided feelings about La Gaviota. As we were leaving, Robert said, “The parrillada was really good, but it’s hard to get around canned abalone.”

I still wanted to like the place. The third time, I hoped, would be the charm. Only it wasn’t, not exactly. I went with my friend John, another intrepid carnivore, who ordered the Bife Aleman , a Chilean steak tartare . This turned out to be a huge portion of fresh and fluffy ground raw steak seasoned with lemon juice and garlic. We ate as much as we could, but there was enough left for many more appetizers.

John then stole the evening by ordering the Pastel de Choclo , a fabulous, fascinating ground corn pie sprinkled with sugar and filled with ground beef, chicken, raisins, olives and spices: Sounds odd, tastes amazing. I sulked over my Bistec a lo Pobre that the waitress had recommended as an authentic Chilean steak dish, which it may well be. It’s also standard coffee shop fare. Before we finished dinner we lost our waitress again, and this time it took well over 30 minutes from the moment we decided to leave to find someone, get our check, pay and depart.

I suppose the truest test of how I feel about a place lies in whether I want to go back. Do I want to go back to La Gaviota? The answer, I have to admit, is yes . . . at least once, so that I can have one Pastel de Choclo all to myself.

Recommended dishes: ceviche mixto , $7.95; Pastel de Choclo , $7.95; parrillada “Juan Chico” (for two), $22.

La Gaviota de Vina, 5254 Van Nuys Blvd., Sherman Oaks. (818) 788-4560. Open for lunch and dinner from 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday and Sunday, until midnight on Friday and Saturday. Major credit cards accepted. Beer and wine. Parking lot behind. Dinner for two, food only: $16 to $45.