RESTAURANT REVIEW : Mexican Chain Delivers on Simple Dishes : * Fragrant soups and pungent shrimp are among low-priced top offerings at Santa Paula’s El Pescador.

Chain restaurants, as happily American as the postwar automobile industry, bring the best and worst to dining.

Highbrow protests notwithstanding, it’s a plain comfort to be able to enjoy a good Caesar salad or steak from a reliable purveyor at multiple locations. But it’s also a shot from hell to be on the road and discover the only game in town is the place you avoid back home.

It seems, apparently for reasons of quality control, that the best of the chains run small in size and are only regional in presence.

El Pescador is situated on Santa Paula’s west end, just north of the Santa Paula Freeway in a 1950-ish white and turquoise building with wraparound picture windows. One of a small group of El Pescador restaurants that run only throughout Southern California, the Santa Paula outlet projects a local as well as a chain feel.

Therein lie its rewards and punishments.

The place turns a brisk business midweek from locals who show up for the remarkably low-priced and high-quality specials: Monday’s cocido de res, or beef soup, ($3.95); or Tuesday’s caldo de pollo, or chicken soup, ($3.95).

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Each arrives in a huge dinner-size bowl and is made special by deeply flavorsome, fragrant broths laden with fresh vegetables as well generous cuts of main-attraction ingredients. A shot of Mexican piquant sauce and squeeze of fresh lemon bring these vivid soups well above the commonplace and, coupled with warm flour tortillas, makes one of the best, nutritionally smart, cheap meals around.

But El Pescador reveals its bleak chain roots in the more ambitious offerings from its huge laminate menu: grilled whole red snapper and steamed fish of wide variety in a foil pouch. Sadly, the returns at this end of the culinary spectrum carry major disappointment.

The mojarra al mojo de ajo (red snapper marinated in garlic sauce, $8.75) is gray, dried out, flavorless, tough from apparent freezing, overcooked, inedible. Empapelado de mariscos (El Pescador’s signature dish, $11) combines abalone, octopus, shrimp and fish fillet with vegetables and creamed mushrooms for steaming in foil. Alas, the butter-heavy sauce and undissolved mushroom goop overwhelm everything; though properly cooked, key ingredients have lost their distinct flavors.

Best among the entrees are the simpler, more everyday choices. Filete Veracruz ($7.95), in which a sparklingly fresh, thick and tender chunk of pollack--a type of cod--arrived in the classic vegetable/citrus sauce, was just right. And camarones al mojo de ajo ($7.95) may well be the entree of choice: fresh large shrimp coated in a pungent, salty garlic sauce and hot-seared, encrusting the outside while keeping things sweet and succulent within.

All dishes are served with a small soup, rice, tortillas, chopped lettuce and tomato and, inexplicably in some instances, potato salad--over-salted at that.

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It is difficult to complain about a place as modest and as big-hearted as El Pescador. It’s a clean, well-run shop that simply misses on the big plays. So keep it simple, order a middle-of-the road entree or do the Mexican thing and show up for a giant caldo with an appetizer on the side.

Best among such appetizers is compechana , in which perfectly fresh and lightly cooked chunks of octopus join large shrimp in a fragrant tomato sauce ($4.95 for small, which is actually quite large). Again, a shot of hot sauce and dash of lemon lend a defining edge to the flavors. Mixed seafood salad ($4.50), incorporating shrimp, octopus and abalone with onion, tomato and cilantro, bursts with flavor.

Joining the weeknight soup specials is Thursday’s caldo de albondigas , or meatball soup, ($3.95), and it is deeply satisfying.

El Pescador keeps a small list of inexpensive wines. But its beer selection is truly well-conceived, heavy on Mexico’s heavier dark and amber brews such as Modello Negra and Bohemia--just the right tonics for simple hearty eating.

* WHAT: El Pescador.

* WHERE: 322 S. Peck Road, Santa Paula, 525-8846.

* WHEN: Open seven days from 7 a.m. for breakfast, with lunch served Monday through Friday only from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Dinner seating stops at 9 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, at 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday.

* FYI: Major credit cards. Dinner for two, food only: $10-$30.