An Array of Hearty Offerings : Don’t visit the Russian Village without bringing a big appetite for its elaborate, banquet-style dining.

I’m always amazed whenever one of our growing number of Russian restaurants comes equipped with a dance band, as does the Russian Village restaurant. Honestly, after one of the banquet meals this place serves, just walking seems like a superhuman effort.

Russian Village is one of the more charming restaurants belonging to this genre. It’s stuck in the corner of a Moorpark Street strip mall, but the owners have made the most of the space. The partially bricked-in dining room is L-shaped, with a small stage at the angle. Long, banquet-style tables positively groaning with food occupy a good part of the space.

The theme in here, one supposes, is Old Russian Village. A hearth is built into one wall. Wooden plaques lettered in Cyrillic script hang overhead, emblazoned with the names of old Russian villages like Vladimir and Suzdal, places from long before the time of Catherine the Great. There’s lots of red in the decor, too, even if that color has gone out of fashion in Russia lately. The tablecloths are red; the waiters wear red uniforms, and there’s a preponderance of red food: Waiting for you on your table are borscht, ikra Odessa (fish roe), ruddy smoked fish and basturma (a sort of Armenian pastrami the color of red leather).

The kitchen here prepares a combination of Russian and Armenian specialties, with a little bit of Georgia, Ukraine and the Baltics thrown in for good measure. When you order the banquet table, served for four or more at $25 per person, the table is so full of food that there is literally no room for the silverware. I counted 12 dishes (these were just the cold appetizers), all huddling together on small, crowded plates.

They included baklazhanaia ikra (literally, eggplant caviar), a piquant, grainy eggplant dip; hummus, the Middle Eastern sesame and garbanzo dip; thin-sliced basturma , a sort of Caucasian carpaccio with a kick like a mule; something the menu calls khaladets , which I can only describe as meat jellied in a soft aspic and cut into squares; the inevitable Stolichny salad, a chunky Russian potato salad with peas; creamy, garlic-laden carrot slaw (my favorite of all these dishes); three kinds of smoked fish; pickled vegetables; marinated mushrooms; and sarma (stuffed cabbage).

Whew! Shall we dance?

Let’s hope the musicians aren’t playing those droopy-lidded Gypsy tunes, because we need to work up a little appetite for the next courses: pirozhki (bite-sized meat pies with an oily risen dough), pelmeni and boiled potatoes. Pelmeni are juicy, delicate little Siberian ravioli, 12 to an order, floating in melted butter. And they do make an impression, stuffed with a mixture that might be equal parts meat and garlic.

You can option out the pelmeni for vareniki , a Ukranian specialty, but I wouldn’t. The vareniki are little pillows that can be filled with either meat, cheese or potato. The ones here are bland potato vareniki , not nearly as interesting as the pelmeni.

Banquet diners are technically limited in their choice of main courses to lamb kebab, lula kebab, beef Stroganoff or tabaka , but it doesn’t take much arm-twisting here to get most anything you want.

For instance, you could ask for pokharski-- which are thick lamb chops flavored with garlic and parsley, tender, flavorful and perfectly spiced--as a substitute for a regular entree, and if you smile at the waiter he might sneak you an order without the $3 surcharge over the banquet price.

Among the regular selections, tabaka is a tasty Cornish game hen, pressed flat and grilled to a regal crispness, but the lula kebab is really nothing more than a spicy Russian hamburger. I was disappointed in the beef Stroganoff, because it was stingy with the beef and mushrooms, and the sauce was bland and runny. But the lamb kebab is meaty and tender, cooked to a pink turn.

You can also get both quail and chicken Kiev here (although I didn’t taste them), as well as several other meat and seafood specialties. I did taste a swordfish kebab and found it to be delicious, although the pilaf on the side could have used a bit more flavor.

They’ll even prepare you a whole duckling, $19.95 by advance order, though that’s extra as far as the banquet goes.

Fortunately, there isn’t much in the way of dessert, even though the menu advises you to “ask your waiter for dessert selection.” I had a dish of cherry vanilla ice cream, the evening’s only offering, which I polished off in short order. Too bad I never learned to break-dance.

Where and When Location: Russian Village, 13325 Moorpark St., Sherman Oaks. Suggested Dishes: Banquet table, $25 per person. Hours: Lunch 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday; dinner 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. nightly. Price: Dinner for two, $25 to $50. Full bar. Parking in lot. MasterCard and Visa. Call: (818) 981-0089.