RESTAURANT REVIEW : All to Order : The Pasta Place gives you numerous choices--the shape, the dough, the sauce, but specify if you want it cooked <i> al dente</i> .

Just when you thought you’d seen every conceivable type of Italian restaurant, along comes The Pasta Place.

This is a small, likable mini-mall storefront, run by an intriguing character named Roberto Loiderman. Loiderman has connections to Italy, Argentina, Israel and other countries. He has led something of an adventurous life, and it shows in what he serves in his restaurant. You can start a meal here with Middle Eastern appetizers and progress to an Argentine chicken torte, all before you get to your pasta.

The idea behind the pasta preparations is rather intriguing, too. All pastas are literally extruded to order on one of those mysterious pasta machines. You specify the die for the pasta you want--say, pappardelle , linguine, fettuccine or angel hair--and presto, out come fresh noodles cut in that shape.

Did I mention that you also need to tell the kitchen here the type of dough you wish? A minor detail. Choose from flavors such as lime-cilantro, red pepper, spinach, rosemary, lemon-pepper or ordinary egg dough. Lastly, choose the sauce, one of about eight the restaurant does on any given day. This gives a staggering range of possibilities.

Let’s see: Just four pasta shapes, times eight dough choices, times seven sauces . . . . Mamma mia ! No wonder we never get tired of pasta.

The Pasta Place started as a takeout, but Loiderman soon discovered that people wanted to sit down and eat their pasta in his cafe. So he installed several tables in what must be one of the two or three smallest dining areas on all of Ventura Boulevard, developing a regular lunch business in the process.

So don’t come if you’re claustrophobic. The narrow wooden tables sit practically on top of a glass deli counter that holds salads, empanadas and delicacies such as polenta tricolore , a three-layered cornmeal casserole flavored with tomato, basil, Parmesan and pine nuts.

The front of the restaurant is a tiny market area where you can buy dried pastas, olive oils, balsamic vinegars and like Italian necessities. In the rear, there is a refrigerated cooler where you get San Pellegrino mineral water, gelati and other things to enhance the meal.

Everyone starts with a terrific olive oil dip, a piquant pool of minced garlic, crushed red pepper and other spices that is perfect for Italian bread.

Loiderman was once a chief cook on a kibbutz; that explains why his Middle Eastern appetizers-- hummus and its smoky cousin baba ghannouj , made with eggplant instead of garbanzos--are so polished.

I can’t say the same for all Loiderman’s starters, though. The empanada is filled with chicken, tomatoes and spices, a bland creation with a crust that gets soft when the thing is placed in a microwave. His Argentine spinach torte is doughy, and the one soup that I tasted was an almost completely flavorless vegetarian minestrone.

I do like Loiderman’s coarsely chopped salad, made with generous amounts of turkey, Genoa salami and Provolone cheese. That, together with the bread and the olive dip, makes quite a good lunch.

But hey, we’ve come for pasta, haven’t we? These are low-priced, generously portioned pastas. If you do not specify how you like your pasta, it will probably be cooked to slightly beyond al dente , a teensy bit soft.

We quickly realized that ordering every possible pasta combination was impractical, so we settled on four.

The lime linguine fettuccine with Alfredo sauce was everyone’s favorite--green noodles with a faint citrus flavor in a rich cream sauce.

Egg fettuccine came in a bland chicken mushroom marinara, a sauce with a taste much like the filling in the empanada. The slightly doughy potato gnocchi go well with the restaurant’s knockout creamy marinara sauce, and the red pepper angel hair (the pasta is not discernibly hot) is well served by a meat sauce chock full of minced Italian sausage.

At dessert time, the moist, pancake-flat tirami su tastes much better than it looks. The cannoli are filled with a rich ricotta cheese and chocolate chip cream, the brownies so gooey you’d swear they need another 15 minutes in the oven and the terrific mascarpone cheesecake has a thick Graham cracker crumb crust.

Loiderman makes a mean espresso, too, and will be glad to sell any of his sauces, and pastas for that matter, to go. They may not be hot when you get them home, but I guarantee there will be room to enjoy them.

Where and When Location: The Pasta Place, 11040 Ventura Boulevard, Studio City. Suggested dishes: baba ghannouj , $4.95; chopped salad, $5.95; fresh pastas, $6.25-$6.95, mascarpone cheesecake, $2.95. Hours: Lunch and dinner 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Monday-Friday, 10 a.m.-9 p.m. Saturday, noon-9 p.m. Sunday. Price: Dinner for two, $12-$25. No alcoholic beverages. Parking lot. American Express, MasterCard and Visa. Call: (818) 985-3538.