RESTAURANT REVIEW : Strong Link in the Chain : Panda Cafe in Burbank offers an efficient group of tasty dishes while keeping prices reasonably low.

Chances are you’ve dined at a Panda Inn. They’re a whoppingly successful chain of glossy, slightly Westernized Mandarin-style restaurants, located all over this part of the state.

Andrew Cherng expanded his original concept a few years back with a second chain called Panda Express, designed for the Chinese food lover who hits the ground running at lunch break. Panda Expresses can be found in malls, downtown areas and commercial districts, and they’ve been pretty much of a big hit as well.

Partial as I am to more authentic Chinese food, I’ve been reserved in my praise of Cherng’s other restaurants. This time, though, I won’t be. He seems to have found a home with his third and latest concept, Panda Cafe, presently being tried out in the ever-burgeoning downtown area of Burbank. (Johnny Carson is retired, and downtown Burbank actually is developing a terrible beauty.)

It’s a simple enough place, with Spartan comforts such as gray vinyl booths and paper place mats on tables, but everything seems to run as smoothly as an expensive Swiss watch. Cherng and his crew have clearly developed the mass market Chinese concept to the point of an art form, narrowing the menu to an efficient group of tasty dishes while keeping prices below the point where anybody could really object.

The restaurant is in the new Palm Court, just behind Fuddrucker’s. I mention this because you may miss it the first time around. Look for a series of little signs to point you in the right direction.

If you have time for a multi-course lunch, make sure to start with good appetizers like onion pancake and assorted dim sum--which are as close, incidentally, to the real China as you’ll come in here. The onion pancake is a crisp round of chive-stuffed bread, deep-fried at the perfect temperature with scarcely a drop of excess oil around the edges. The dim sum combination is served in a steamer, six assorted dumplings according to the whim of the chef. The shao mai, tiny noodle wrappers filled with minced pork, are particularly appealing.

Then there are Chinese soups, most of them light and appetizing. Hot-and-sour soup is probably the safest choice, a longtime Panda trademark with a vinegary tang and plenty of good ingredients such as mushroom, dredged pork and bamboo shoot. Chicken corn soup is another good one. It sounds bland but isn’t, and has a meltingly sweet aftertaste.

Since I’ve complained about the Panda chain’s “sweet-and-pungent” dishes in the past, I bypassed them here. In the past, they’ve been various meats heavily battered in deep-fried cornstarch, doused in unctuous, sugary sauces. In retrospect, perhaps I should have given them another chance. Kon pao shrimp, for example, too oily in some of the Pandas, is a delight here: fat prawns in an intense brown sauce with cashews, scallions and numbingly hot fagara peppers adding richness and complexity.

Vegetable dishes are close to perfect here. The restaurant’s sauteed spinach, braised string beans and Sichuan bean curd are all simple dishes featuring fresh ingredients. If I have one complaint, it is that the tofu, starred for pepperiness, doesn’t deliver on that score. At least the wonderful earthenware crock the dish is served in keeps this velvety brown sauce warm almost indefinitely.

Noodle and rice dishes are close to what you’d get in authentic Chinese restaurants people from Taiwan and Hong Kong have opened in the San Gabriel Valley lately. Chow fun with beef is less oily than its noodle house counterparts. Here, the mouth-watering rice noodles do not absorb the traditional shocking amount of oil. The beef’s leaner, too. Yang chow fried rice, with tiny bits of chicken, egg, barbecued pork and shrimp, makes a good light lunch, or a fine late supper.

One Panda Inn favorite I miss is mango pudding, a delightfully refreshing iced dessert made from pureed mango. It’s on the menu here, but unfortunately often unavailable. A highly gelatinous almond pudding hardly serves as a just substitute. Not much taste, here.

Instead, nibble on your white-chocolate-enrobed fortune cookie, still the fanciest anywhere. They are definitely a rich man’s cookies, but this is most assuredly a poor man’s restaurant.

Where and When Location: Panda Cafe, 161 E. Orange Grove Avenue, Burbank. Suggested dishes: onion pancake, $2.50; assorted dim sum, $3.50; kon pao shrimp, $7.25; braised string beans, $5.75; chow fun with beef, $5.95. Hours: Lunch and dinner daily, 11 a.m.-10:30 p.m. Beer and wine only. Free parking in adjacent structure. All major cards accepted. Price: Lunch for two, $13-$25. Call: (818) 972-9800.