RESTAURANT REVIEW : A Chilly Island of Hot Dishes : La Bamba’s atmosphere and food are a mix of Mexico, Cuba, Panama, Jamaica and more.

Despite its location near the summit of Burbank’s wind-swept Glenoaks Boulevard, La Bamba fancies itself as an island restaurant. Go figure.

Oh, the menu does read like an index of tropical place names--Key Largo chicken, St. Thomas burrito, Panama shrimp and other equatorial-sounding nibbles. Plus, it’s fun to sip the various licuados --tropical milkshakes made from such fruits as mamey, papaya and mango--out here on La Bamba’s terraced outdoor patio. So go along, and pretend you’re in the islands. Just be sure to turn up the collar on that shirt if you’re planning an evening meal. Bbbbrrrr . It gets chilly here in this “island” spot when the sun goes down.

This is really quite a simple operation. You order your food from an open kitchen counter, then a waiter brings it on a plastic tray to your table. The patio tables are shielded by umbrellas and covered in well-worn oilcloths colored like faded leisure suits. Whenever the ramshackle patio shows signs of life, the staff turns up the volume on a boombox, so you’d better like that Jamaican sound. “Guantanamera” (the reggae arrangement) played at least half a dozen times during my last dinner here. Too bad the music didn’t warm the nighttime chill.

Luckily, this food can heat you up on the double. Almost everyone gets a basket of the intensely garlicky, oily bread, which makes a good complement to most of these dishes.

The Cuban sandwich makes an entire meal. The filling is lechon , succulent roast pork cut into thin slices, Swiss cheese, mustard, mayo and butter and dill pickle slices on a crusty grilled baguette. Tamales La Habana turn out to be two cylinders of soft masa (leached cornmeal), with a soft texture and delicious, vinegary tang. Next time I’m going to ask for the tamales without the mundane ranchera topping, which is mostly gooey melted cheese.

Most dinners come with fragrant, mustard-yellow rice and majestic black beans, which by a happy coincidence are the best-prepared of the restaurant’s side dishes. Tostones are green bananas sliced thin, battered and deep-fried until almost hard, and they taste great. La Bamba’s yucca (cassava root) comes boiled, a starch staple that you eat with a bit of chopped garlic and a squeeze of lemon.

Main dishes aren’t creative but they are solid and tasty. The undisputed star would be camarones ajillo , a dish that belongs to just about any of the Spanish-speaking countries in this hemisphere. It’s your basic garlic-sauteed shrimp dish, and this version is made with a scandalous amount of butter. Mix it with this fluffy rice, and you are one league closer to paradise (in more ways than one).

Jamaican chicken, on the other hand, is plain as day. It’s really just chicken hashed up with a bit of tomato and bell pepper, minus the jerk spices that we identify with Jamaican cooking these days. I will admit that it goes well with this rice. Bistec a la Venezolana is a hearty supper dish of flame-broiled, seasoned beef, smothered with a flurry of onions hot off the grill. And of course there is the traditional lechon asado , marinated, oven-roasted pork. Maybe I’m mistaken, but I’d swear this stuff is really good Mexican-style fried carnitas. It doesn’t have enough garlic to masquerade as Cuban.

But it all seems reasonable. After all, one of the partners here is Mexican, and that is definitely Mexican Spanish he speaks with the saute cook. Now we understand why there is a long list of special burritos, St. Thomas, Key Largo and flauta Caribena among others. They’re good and fat, too, like burritos are supposed to be.

The St. Thomas is filled with lechon , beans, rice, pico de gallo , shredded Jack and Cheddar cheeses, lots of sour cream and guacamole. It must be 1,500 calories. Key Largo is stuffed with pieces of grilled chicken, black beans and no rice. Flauta Caribena is the pork again with rice, no beans and pico de gallo , the surprise being that it is deep fried with an egg roll textured tortilla shell.

There are good Mexican accouterments for all these things: immutably Mexican red and green salsas, fine guacamole, good homemade tortilla chips. The restaurant is also opening an indoor dining room, which adjoins the patio and should be available for use any day now.

Maybe they’ll put a palm tree or two in it, you know, the island of Burbank, mon .

WHERE AND WHEN

Location: La Bamba, 2600 N. Glenoaks Blvd., Burbank.

Suggested Dishes: tropical fruit shakes ( licuados ), $1.50; tostones , $1.50; camarones ajillo , $6.75; St. Thomas burrito, $4.50; Cuban sandwich, $4.50.

Hours: 11 a.m.-9 p.m. daily.

Price: Dinner for two, $9-25. No alcohol. Street parking. Cash only.

Call: (818) 846-3358.