RESTAURANT REVIEW : More Grill Mania : The latest in the Gaucho chain, offering meaty Argentine cuisine, is the largest, brightest and hippest to date.

Those in the mood for meat and plenty of it will probably find low-cost, low-intensity satisfaction at the newest Gaucho Grill in Woodland Hills.

The concept of a chain of Argentine grills started several years back in Hollywood. It has enjoyed--for the Argentine genre, at least--unprecedented popularity ever since.

This is the fifth Gaucho Grill, and the largest, brightest and possibly hippest to date. It’s an airy, vaguely commercial space with lots of casual appeal, enhanced by ultra-basic furniture: unadorned chairs and tables fashioned from unfinished blond wood. The high, dramatically lit ceiling looks like a giant corkboard. Exposed ducts snake around defiantly just below it.

As at all Gaucho Grills, the food is finished on an enormous open grill and then served at high speed. Here, the waiters wear black T-shirts and slide around on a snazzy parquet floor, but at the cost of some of the charm; the Studio City locale, for example, is a dark, intimate room that looks like a Madrid nightclub. Other Gaucho Grills are planned for Glendale and Pasadena, and I hope they will be a little less sanitized than this one.

I must say I’ve never been particularly in love with this style of cooking. The Gaucho Grills offer excellent value for the money, I admit, but if you’re after a memorable dinner, good luck.

Maybe it’s the no-frills aspect that puts me off. These chairs (ouch!) are hard , and I dislike drinking wine out of little tumblers, especially when the waiters always fill them, quite inconveniently, right to the brim.

Apart from the oily chimichurri (something between a salsa and a salad dressing--composed of olive oil, parsley, garlic, chili pepper, vinegar and oregano--that Argentines put on everything), the food here is not as ethnically correct as at places like El Morfi in Glendale or the redoubtable Gardel’s on Melrose. At Gaucho Grill, I find, the dishes are nearly as closely geared to the mass market as the decor. They distinctly lack Argentine soul.

The appetizer list is headed by a meaty lineup of morcilla , mollejas and asado detira , none of which make me long for the Pampas. Morcilla is a fat, dark blood sausage with a crunchy skin. This one is so overstuffed and over-spiced with cloves I feel as if I’m nibbling on a sachet.

The mollejas (sweetbreads) are tasty but a bit tough, though at $4.95 I won’t complain that they are not fork-tender. Asado detira are merely tough: gristly marinated beef ribs that taste mostly of suet and spices. If you’ve ever had kal bi in a Korean restaurant, you’ll recall how good marinated charcoal-grilled beef ribs can be. This dish is a poor reminder.

I don’t have such harsh words for any of the grills or salads here. None are identifiably Argentine without the chimichurri , but most are solid, workmanlike representatives of the grill room tradition.

Salad completa is kind of a chopped Greek salad: goat cheese, olives, tomatoes, lettuce and fat, piquant croutons. Add chicken and subtract the olives and you get the delicious Gaucho chicken salad, at $5.95 possibly the best bet on this menu.

Think of Milanesa de carne as a chicken fried steak that does the tango. This is a flat, oblate, crusty thing, mostly bread crumbs and garlic, not greasy and moderately bland. Pay the extra dollar and you can have it with arroz de Buenos Aires, a pilaf with pepper and onions. If you don’t, it comes, like the other entrees, with curly fries, the quaintly shaped fast-food french fries dusted with seasoned salt now tearing up the teen-age set.

Medio pollo picante is a half-chicken on the bone, black with charcoal marks and ruddy with spices. Ours was inexcusably red in the center, too, but the spices are delicious, and the dish works reasonably well. The best steak is probably the rib eye ( bife costilla ). Well, OK--so it is a bit gristly. For $7.95 you shouldn’t expect miracles.

Desserts are rather pat. Apart from a sticky, sugary flan, this course runs to a few out-of-character commercial cheesecakes and a rich but generic chocolate mousse pie.

But don’t cry for Argentina just yet. The cappuccino, the generous portions and the energy level here all get high marks. And my opinions, judging from these crowds, seem to be in the minority.

Where and When Location: Gaucho Grill, 6435 Canoga Ave., Woodland Hills. Suggested dishes: medio pollo picante; $6.95; Milanesa de carne, $7.75; salad completa, $5.75. Hours: Lunch and dinner, 11 a.m.-11 p.m. daily. Price: Dinner for two, $15-$22. Beer and wine only. Parking lot. American Express, MasterCard and Visa. Call: (818) 992-6416.