RESTAURANT REVIEW : Senmi Is a Tasty Secret : * Restaurant is accessible, affordable, and satisfying, but little known, even to nearby Cal State Northridge students.

Here’s a howdy-do. Around the Cal State Northridge campus, chain restaurants usually fill to capacity, while great little ethnic haunts only a few building-lengths away may sit two-thirds empty. Who said life’s fair?

Most of the CSUNies don’t know what they’re missing in Senmi, an extraordinary Japanese noodle house along the lines of the one in the Juzo Itami film “Tampopo.” Convenient as it is to the campus (and cheap: nothing over $7), apparently only the Japanese students eat there. Curiously, Senmi’s owner, Yoshihiro Yokochi, a go-getter with just enough English to take your order, looks like a student himself.

Senmi’s decor is minimalist in the strict Japanese sense: white chairs, black tables, a couple of paper lanterns. It’s so authentic-looking, the only way you can tell you haven’t space-warped right into Japan is that there are Kikkoman and Tabasco bottles on all the tables; an odd cross-cultural effect.

I find this style of Japanese food far more accessible than sushi, and a much more efficient road to quick satisfaction. Noodles are the staff of life in Japan, where sushi is really considered either a delicacy or a snack, depending on the type.

The aptly named Senmi ramen is probably the best thing on the menu. It’s an enormous bowl of long, thin flour noodles in a broth infused with the essences of ginger, bamboo and garlic. You can order it as spicy as you want. Yokochi throws in a handful of ground pork and sauteed vegetables for good measure, but the dish would be soulful enough without them. With them, it is a virtual epiphany for under $5.

One evening I made a meal of the delicious bacon spaghetti. Something looked familiar about it--something non-Italian, I mean. Suddenly I realized that the topping was shredded nori , a kind of dried seaweed. Underneath, the tastes of mushrooms, Canadian bacon and butter predominated, making for a richer supper than you might expect.

The plump flour noodles called udon are delicious in a fish-flavored broth; the sansai , or dried mixed vegetable, is a topping. Gomoku literally means “five flavors”; here, the soup is flavored with shrimp, carrots, bamboo, corn and mushrooms. Miso tanmen is a broth based on fermented beans, rounded out by pork and vegetables.

Those who prefer that their noodles not come floating in soup should go for the buckwheat flour noodles called soba , which are cooked on a griddle. The best-known version is called yakisoba , here fried with chicken and vegetables.

Yokochi has recently expanded his menu to include some appetizers and Chinese-influenced stir-fries, and even a few setto --set dinners including a quirky cabbage salad with Thousand Island dressing, miso soup, pickles and rice. My favorite appetizer is the delicious gyoza , which comes six to an order. These tiny, delicate pot-stickers have a meaty filling mixed with a little minced bamboo.

Among the stir-fries, mabo tofu consists of cubes of bean curd in a spicy meat sauce. In origin, this is a staple of northern China, but the Japanese have improved upon it (better tofu, more subtly spiced). The tasty pork and spicy vegetable stir fry is, I suspect, the same thing as the topping that is tossed into your bowl of ramen. It goes well with rice, too, and here you get a lot more of it.

The setto entrees are rather plain, but fresh and good to eat. The fried chicken--small chunks wrapped in a light, golden batter--tastes of fresh cooking oil. When you order broiled mackerel, you get a whole fish with a firm flesh and strong flavors, the perfect companion for its accompanying mound of fresh ginger.

I didn’t order the Japanese hamburg steak, because it dawned on me that something akin to that would always be available at the Chili’s across the street. But I couldn’t help wondering whether at Chili’s you can get a burger with soy, ginger and miso soup. Somehow, I didn’t think so.

Where and When

What: Senmi.

Location: 18440 Dearborn St., Northridge.

Suggested Dishes: Senmi ramen , $4.75; gyoza , $3.70; yakisoba , $4.95; bacon spaghetti, $4.95; mabo tofu, $4.75.

Hours: Lunch and dinner 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 11:30 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. Friday, noon to 10:30 p.m. Saturday, 4:30 to 9 p.m. Sunday.

Price: Dinner for two, $12 to $23. Beer and wine only. Parking in lot. American Express, MasterCard and Visa.

Call: (818) 772-6786.