NATURAL SELECTIONS : Looking for a Lightweight Meal? These Eateries Can Make Sensible Choices

With summer coming, the emphasis in many local restaurants shifts to health. You can ask your favorite chef to steam vegetables, omit salt and fat when preparing meat or fish and serve those caloric sauces on the side. But what about this option? Choose restaurants that pride themselves in these foods. There is certainly no shortage of them.

Accents on Health, a health/wellness organization based in San Diego, recently published a guide called “Healthy Dining in Orange County,” which contains recipes from dozens of participating local restaurants as diverse as Antonello, Mayur Cuisine of India and McCormick and Schmick’s. The list continues to grow. (For a copy, try any Ralphs grocery store or call (619) 541-2049.)

I have my own favorites, of course, such as Cafe Zinc in Laguna Beach and Fitness Pizza and Pasta in Yorba Linda, but these places have received ample notices already. So the following is a sampling of a few less written-about restaurants--listed in no particular order--that are specifically geared toward lightness and health.

Just remember one thing: Eating healthy does not necessarily mean weight loss. I gained three pounds during this assignment, precisely because I assumed I could eat as much as I wanted. I’m here to tell you that that just ain’t so.

Oh, and one added joy. Vegetarian, low-fat and low-cholesterol cooking is a veritable bargain. So you can tighten your belt while you, er, tighten your belt.

* Healthy Gourmet. You’d never guess it from the name, but this breezy little storefront restaurant balances its California Lite cuisine with some of the area’s best Middle Eastern dishes, mostly vegetarian fare that is a natural for the health-oriented eater.

The restaurant’s Mediterranean platter is a Vegan plateful of stuffed grape leaves, falafel, hummus, tabbouleh, baba ghannouj and a sensuously purple beet puree, particularly good when eaten as an appetizer. The baba ghannouj is especially memorable. It is an eggplant spread enriched with sesame paste.

Good soups like chicken and brown rice laced with cumin and a richly flavorful lentil are precursors to the more substantial dishes here, things ranging from braised lemon and garlic chicken to a grilled salmon with frizzled onions. All meals here are nutritionally balanced, with fresh ingredients that are naturally low in fat, cholesterol-free and loaded with fiber and complex carbos.

A heady Moroccan stew, for example, made of garbanzos and sweet potatoes with aromatic spices, is served on a bed of fluffy couscous. The more substantial entrees come with fragrant brown rice and a compendium of good steamed vegetables.

The few desserts served here, such as chocolate raspberry torte, peach cobbler and lemon tart, are sweetened with fruit juices and contain no sugar; in taste, they are a cut above the usual health food fare. In addition, there are a variety of refreshing beverages: ginseng-laced iced tea, fresh fruit shakes in flavors like date and strawberry whip, and an iced house coffee flavored with Frangelico. Caffeine, apparently, is not universally shunned by this genre of restaurant.

The Healthy Gourmet, 3505 E. Chapman Ave., Orange. (714) 771-1993. Open 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Saturday, 5 to 9 p.m. Sunday. Visa, MasterCard and Discover accepted.

* Chicks Natural. There is no end of restaurants specializing in chicken these days, but Chicks Natural, a San Diego import, may be the best of them. Its owners will certainly tell you that their birds are the healthiest.

The Fountain Valley store has a cheery pastel motif, and customers can dine in, at particle-board wooden tables, or out, on plastic patio furniture positioned to face the onrushing traffic of Brookhurst Street. Chicks Natural prides itself in the exclusive use of fresh, hormone-free Foster Farms chickens--great, plump birds which twist languidly on the brick oven spit located right next to the door.

The chickens spend time in an all-natural marinade, one infused with lemon juice, oregano and other spices. Franchisee Jim Sihler agrees that they taste almost Mediterranean. The chickens roast for up to two hours, allowing all the fat to drip off, and resulting in a tender, beautifully moist bird. I could eat this chicken every day.

All side dishes except potato salad are marked with little hearts, indicative of adherence to American Heart Assn. guidelines, and some are quite good. Baked beans and good roasted potatoes are for the more substantial appetites. Steamed vegetables and corn cobbettes are for lighter ones. About the only a la carte item is a creamy, hand-tossed Caesar salad, made with an anchovy-based dressing from a company called Todd’s. Sweet tooths will have to be content with the store’s Paradise frozen yogurt, the hard-packed style. It has a scant 17 calories per ounce, and good flavor.

Chicks Natural, 18122 Brookhurst St., Fountain Valley. (714) 964-4211. Open daily, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Visa and MasterCard accepted.

* California Wok. Baiyok Ishikawa, a former microbiologist, is mater familias at this clean, modern eatery, a mini-mall cafe specializing in Thai and Chinese dishes.

The restaurant is cheerful, simply decorated with Japanese prints and fresh flowers, and Ishikawa treats customers like family. Many of the dishes she serves are marked with those same little red hearts found at Chicks Natural, and should not be confused with the little stars that connote hot and spicy on this menu. No MSG or animal fats are used in any preparations here, a rare condition for an Oriental kitchen, but dishes are as full flavored as they would be anywhere.

Traditional condiments such as chili sauce, Thai fish sauce and various ginger and soy concoctions are homemade, without oil. Meats are completely trimmed of fat and often marinated, resulting in an exceptionally tender product.

Initially, this kitchen was purely Chinese, but soon Ishikawa became interested in promoting Thai, her native cuisine. The result is such wonderful dishes as larb, ground meat (a choice chicken, beef or pork) eaten inside raw cabbage leaves; grainy Thai curries thickened with coconut milk, and addictively spicy fried rice dishes redolent of chili and basil. Stars from the Chinese side include richly flavorful soups, a bone-dry crispy chicken and dry fried string beans, stir-fried in a hot brown bean sauce.

California Wok, 4466 Cerritos Ave., Los Alamitos. (714) 527-0226. Open 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday, till 10 p.m. on Friday and Saturday. Closed Sunday. All major cards accepted.

* Mother’s Market and Kitchen. Count on a wait for a table at Mother’s, although I’m not quite sure why. The Costa Mesa branch of this all-purpose market and restaurant reminds me of a New Age Price Club. It has a warehouse style, deconstructionist ceiling, aisles of organic produce, magazine racks lined with publications from Aikido Today to Green Egg, self-help videos with titles like “Weight Loss” and “Past-Life Regression” and shelves stocked with plenty of vitamins.

The restaurant is tucked--no, make that crowded--into the market’s back corner, and tables are somewhat squeezed together. If you come during the evening, as I did, you often dine to the strains of live guitar music, mostly ‘60s nostalgia.

The best thing to eat here is anything they don’t have to cook, ordered from a strictly vegetarian menu (except for the presence of tuna) fashioned from purely natural foods. Vegetables a la Grecque is a huge platter of marinated mushrooms, curried corn abuzz with cumin and garlic and Indian spiced cauliflower. You can’t go wrong with the good nachos, and salads are uniformly fresh and excellent. Try one with the unctuous house lemon herb dressing.

Cooked food is another matter. Ma’s nut loaf, one of the big sellers, is a dense square of pureed mushrooms, walnuts, cheese, bell peppers, onions and gravy, a protoplasmic protein mush. Pastas, like spinach lasagna, tend to be leaden. Even Oriental dishes, light in character, are unusually ponderous, like the peanut-heavy kung pao tofu and a soy-sodden Oriental stir fry, both served with brown rice. Desserts are awful. Better bring home a pint of Rice Dream from the non-dairy case, or simply content yourself with a bowl of good, dependable fresh fruit.

Mother’s Market and Kitchen, 225 E. 17th St., Costa Mesa, (714) 631-4741, and 19770 Beach Blvd., Huntington Beach, (714) 963-6667. Both locations are open daily, 9 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. Visa, MasterCard and Discover accepted.

* Rutabegorz. This Fullerton eatery still looks as if it belongs on an ivy-covered New England campus, a dark, wooded shed-like dining room on a quiet, tree-lined street. This is a restaurant that caters to both vegetarians and non-vegetarians. Produce here is not organic, but everything is prepared from scratch, and the servers like to tell you that the food here is a lot healthier than average. Still, as one manager put it in a phone conversation, “if you’re looking for strict, you’d better go to Mother’s.”

The restaurant specializes in salads with lots of raw vegetables, served up with things like raw sunflower seeds and homemade dressings like tahini poppy seed and a delicious sesame honey ginger. The menu is a 10-page paper booklet, so you won’t run out of choices.

Good sandwiches with such silly names as “the walnut that kissed the chicken” (chicken, walnuts, sprouts, and lettuce on squaw bread) and such hearty dishes as vegetarian chili (pinto beans with two cheeses, sliced onion, and fresh olive in a strong, hot sauce) are appealing. Stuffed mushrooms with a vegetable bread crumb filling make a good choice, too.

Meatless dishes abound here. Stuffed squash and vegetarian lasagna make filling, tasty meals. The tostada, enchilada, and Mexican casserole, despite a surfeit of gooey cheese, have a nice mix of flavors.

There are good desserts, too, though I won’t vouch for their health quotient. Cheesecake is light, lemony and fresh. Carrot cake, a tall, square piece cut out of a giant loaf pan, has lots of nuts and a moist, springy texture. Apple pie is served in a gigantic slice, with a dry crumb topping and finely chopped fruit.

Rutabegorz, 211 N. Pomona Ave., Fullerton, (714) 738-9339, and 158 W. Main St., Tustin, (714) 731-9807. Open 11 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday, till midnight Friday and Saturday. Closed Sunday. Cash and personal checks only.

* The Harvest Restaurant and Bakery. Add the Harvest to the list of politically correct restaurants in Orange County. The takeout menu is printed on recycled paper, beef for hamburgers is free from growth stimulants and antibiotics and many of the dishes are endorsed with an “HM” from Healthmark, a Colorado health consultant that publishes guidelines for low-fat and low-cholesterol eating.

This is a large, sun-filled space with a high ceiling, from which a few quilts have been hung for added hominess. Tables are made of blond wood, so the place feels squeaky clean, and servers are mostly fresh faces from adjacent UC Irvine. Too bad this food is so spotty and disappointing.

Smoothies and shakes, with flavors like blueberry and wild strawberry, are chalky but tasty, and soups like cream of mushroom can be delicious. Salads are often topped with sprouts and sunflower seeds. After you eat through all the paraphernalia, you’ll find that the veggies are fresh and tasty.

I can’t say anything too complimentary about the cooked food, though, save a credible spit-roasted chicken. Pastas are watery and overcooked. A brown rice stir fry is far too salty and hot sandwiches like curried tuna are a gloopy mess.

I will say that a few of the cakes and cookies are good (none marked with an “HM”). Best are the excellent honey and pecan nut roll made from whole wheat flour, a selection of homey cookies and the rich apple crumb cake with good ingredients like butter, rolled oats and eggs. You can even have the last one topped with a scoop of Haagen-Dazs vanilla ice cream.

I knew it. The best things in life might be free, but they are not calorie-free.

The Harvest Restaurant and Bakery, 4127 Campus Drive, Irvine. (714) 725-9184. Open 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. Friday, and 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Visa, MasterCard and American Express accepted.