RESTAURANT REVIEW : Follow Your Heart to a Haven for Health Food True Believers

I was tempted to buy a self-awareness tape called “Lose Weight Now” during one of my visits to Follow Your Heart Cafe, but I chickened out during my high-protein shake and put the thing back.

For anyone unfamiliar with the place, Follow Your Heart Cafe in Canoga Park is a restaurant version of “Rocky Horror Picture Show,” which is to say the type of place that a certain group of people visits over and over again. It’s also a natural foods market and doubtlessly, for many, a spiritual center.

The aisles are jammed with magazines such as “Mothering,” African herbs such as yohimbe, aloe mouthwash, preachy Zen texts and the usual compendium of foods and vitamins: rice cakes, organic peaches, amazuke, Life Extension amino acids and tempeh. You’d have to be mighty insensitive not to feel healthy in this place.

The cafe is squeezed into a far corner of the market, completely enclosed behind an indoor wooden trellis. There are lots of plants everywhere. You can sit at the long, somewhat clunky counter, or at one of the thimble-sized, inlaid wooden tables crowded in a row just in front of the main plant area. Gee, it’s dark in here. What this place and these plants could use is a little direct sunlight.

Now, I don’t want you to think I have an attitude; actually I quite like this type of food when it’s well-executed. The thing is, the food here is a bit erratic. Some of it is positively wonderful--the spinach salad and the wok stir-fry, to name names. But sometimes dishes remind me of food from block parties during the ‘60s, especially the gloopy pastas and rock hard cakes. “Hey, man, like, we forgot the baking powder.”

There are several dishes marked with a little heart symbol on the menu. This indicates a standard set by the American Heart Assn.’s “Dine to Your Heart’s Content.” Unfortunately, they were the things I enjoyed least on this menu. The best of them is the roasted eggplant starter known as baba ghannuj, a grainy dip made with olive oil, lemon and herbs. It’s a smoky, ultra-light version that needs more oomph. You can spice it up with a sprinkle of Vegit, a condiment that sits on every table.

When I got the huge basket of nachos, however, I felt right back in my element. The stone ground corn chips that you find in these markets are a tremendous boon to a dish like this one, and the melted jack and cheddar oozing between each chip tastes terrific. They also load it up with avocado, green onion, black olives and a good salsa. You won’t hear about this one on “Lose Weight Now.”

Discipline comes more easily with the spinach salad. The spinach is so fresh it squeaks on your teeth, and there are good mushroom slices, red onion, pieces of apple and toasted rosemary walnuts sprinkled throughout. The one drawback is the size; it’s gigantic and unwieldy.

There are lots of good homemade soups, served in sane little crocks, and the selection changes daily. Mushroom barley is one of my favorites, despite being about as far from the deli version as Santa Cruz is from Tel Aviv. It’s a monkish, almost austere version, with a light broth and clean, pure flavors. Azuki bean soup is good, too, although virtually saltless. I found myself craving soy sauce to liven it up.

That won’t be necessary when it comes to the excellent sandwiches and entrees, many of which are delightfully satisfying. The nutburger is a nut and vegetable patty baked with raw cheddar cheese on a killer (pardon the expression) whole wheat bun that comes hot and crusty from the oven. The multi-grain mushroom burger is even tastier.

Wok stir-fry, depending on what’s fresh, might be broccoli, cauliflower and carrot in a tofu and brown rice base wok-ed up with garlic, ginger and tamari soy; a cliched dish perhaps, but one that cannot be improved upon. And the spinach, feta and ricotta cheese pie (spanakopita) will win you over too, despite a slightly strange burst of dill in every bite.

Directly over the counter is the cafe’s long list of desserts. I must have tasted six or seven of them, and frankly, none tasted very good. The best would have to be the coconut pudding, which is practically nothing but shredded coconut and regrettably high in cholesterol. The peach-raspberry pie I find distressingly bland, and as for the maple pecan and chocolate peanut butter cakes--well, maybe they were designed as some kind of appetite-suppressant to accompany that diet tape.

Suggested dishes: nachos, $4.25; spinach salad, $5,25; nutburger, $5.50; wok stir-fry, $7.50; high protein shake, $2.75.

Follow Your Heart Cafe, 21825 Sherman Way, Canoga Park, (818) 348-3240. Breakfast 7-11 a.m. Monday-Friday; brunch 7 a.m.-2 p.m. Saturday and 9 a.m.-2 p.m. Sunday; lunch and dinner 11 a.m.-9 p.m. every day. Parking lot. No alcoholic beverages. MasterCard and Visa accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $12-$25.