Two Views on the Ranch House : The Ranch House may have become a legend, but its food is uneven. Much of it fails to live up to the restaurant’s reputation.

In the early 1960s, we used to wend our way to Meiners Oaks and the Ranch House restaurant. On the way, we’d stop and buy a couple of bottles of wine. We thought the wine was terribly sophisticated--it was Almaden rose--and it cost about $1.25 a bottle.

In those days, the Ranch House had only very recently shed its original conception as a purely vegetarian operation and had gone into meats, poultry and seafood. But it was still emphasizing fresh vegetables and herbs and was not interested in aged alcohol.

The restaurant was not yet the legend of garden-fresh cuisine it was to become over the next few years.

Since I had known it in its more modest incarnation, it was rather startling to find that a glass of the house wine these days costs around $6 and, if I were to drag in my $1.25 bottle, I’d have to pay $15 for corkage.

But what’s going on with the food?

Some of the starters are outstanding. One night there was a cream of baked potato soup ($4.25) that made me say “wow.” It had a layer of onions sitting on the bottom and tasted like the best baked potato I’d ever eaten, in liquid form.

But there was also the Greek antipasto ($6.50). It was a dish with too much oil and olives that seemed to have come out of a domestic can--just sort of an overall mess. It made me think that the kitchen had forgotten exactly what to do with all of those herbs out in the garden.

Considering the fact that the original concept here was vegetables, it was only apt that we try some. A house special one evening was a mushroom cutlet ($18.95), mushrooms with bread crumbs and eggs formed into a “cutlet,” served in a cheese sauce. It was just all right. But the side dishes, from a simple, superbly cooked fresh broccoli to a complicated cooked salad of cabbage, onions and corn in a cream cheese sauce, do great honor to the restaurant’s vegetarian origins.

Then we got to the meats and the fish. One evening my plate boasted a succulent venison granadier ($23.95), the medallions sauteed in butter, pomegranate and madeira sauce. It was just light enough and the meat was just rare enough.

That same night one of us ordered scallops Monterey, supposedly fresh from the East Coast, baked with crab meat in a bechamel sauce. Perhaps the plane from the East Coast had been held up, because we could smell the scallops all over the table, and it was not an aroma calculated to please.

There was also halibut Portugal, bathed in a delicious sauce of sweet and sour flavors emanating from Dijon mustard, white wine and poached sweet onions. But the fish was overcooked. That’s always a sin, but especially so in a restaurant of this sort, which lives or dies on its reputation of being, shall we say, gentle in its food preparation.

One cloudy Sunday afternoon we decided we’d splurge and go to the top of the menu. My leg of lamb ($23.95) had been boned and rubbed and roasted with olive oil, herbs and garlic, then served in a sauce of port wine. A very tasty dish. But its critical companion did not fare as well.

The roasted prime rib ($23.95) had been ordered medium with the bone on an end cut. It did look superb when it arrived. But apparently an end cut was not available. What the kitchen seemed to have done was to take a bone from an end cut and serve it with an inside piece to make it appear to be an end cut. The meat was extremely overdone and tasteless. Shame on you.

The disappointments were somewhat lessened by the desserts.

The fudge pie a la mode ($4.95) is really “to die for.” The pie comes from the same kitchen that makes all those breads the restaurant is known for.

Perhaps it is the beginnings and the ends that make the Ranch House’s reputation.

* WHERE AND WHEN

The Ranch House, South Lomita Avenue, Ojai, 646-2360. Open for dinner Wednesday-Friday, 6 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.; Saturday, 6 p.m. and 8:30 p.m.; Sunday, 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Open for lunch Sunday 1 to 4 p.m. Reservations accepted, major credit cards accepted. Beer and wine. Lunch or dinner for two, food only, $56 to $68.