RESTAURANT REVIEW : There’s Trouble in This New Fun House : T.G.I. FRIDAY’S chain of eateries offers lots of action, but the food at the Oxnard outlet needs improvement.

In 1965, a fun house called T.G.I. FRIDAY’S opened in New York City: great burgers, wild drinks, a staff that knew from prep school partying and an atmosphere in which all behavior, the louder the better, was appropriate. Thank God It’s Friday, after all, was the driving ethic, except that Friday could just as easily be Monday or Wednesday or any other time that you felt like checking out with a smile.

Now the nation is paved with T.G.I. FRIDAY’S, less often in cities than at the edge of burgeoning strip malls from Cherry Hill, N. J., to Oxnard. They are the same down to the last calculated detail: dark paneling clotted with flea market and collegiate throwaways, from traffic signs to tubas to bicycle horns to snowshoes to someone’s old lederhosen. Suspended over the entire length of the bar area is the obligatory rowing scull, of luminous polished wood--the kind you see and immediately think of Princeton or Harvard.

The keepers of FRIDAY’S want it this way. Boathouse, clubhouse, fun house: Take your pick. Be a part of the action. You will have fun from the moment your server, clad in red-and-white athletic stripes, bounces by in a black derby or Irish tweed driving cap; from the moment the bartenders engage in a bottle-juggling contest for tips; from the moment the clamor engulfs you and becomes that magic of all magic, buzz.

That’s the good news, if you like being part of The Scene, and I’ll be the first to confess my longstanding affection for an annual late-night stop at the nearest FRIDAY’S. Indeed, this new FRIDAY’S, situated at the entrance to Shopping at the Rose in Oxnard, has been jammed from the start.

But so far, there’s trouble with the food. It has been dramatically uneven: on one occasion quite good, on another just OK, and on several others unacceptably undercooked or overcooked and badly turned out. Only so much merriment will gloss over calamari served with meat (read: meat) sauce, sirloin grilled once to shoe leather and once left purple, chicken wings dried out from overcooking and unredeemed by bland sauce.

The service, too, while zealous about pleasing the customer, is at times so caught up in scene-making as to be out to lunch. On that count, one meal was taken in which the appetizers and dinner salad arrived simultaneously with the entrees, one of which was cold. Without prompting, the server kept saying, “I’ll send the manager over to see you,” an odd and unsatisfying solution to her serial failure at getting anything right. (He never showed.)

Among appetizers, zucchini fries ($4.99) were best. Plump, freshly cut, underdone for firmness, and robed in a buttery batter, these decadent spears were perfect. Pot stickers ($6.29), or Chinese dumplings filled with pork, ginger and garlic, were nicely turned out but under-seasoned in the accompanying hot and sour sauce.

Fried calamari ($5.99) wore too much batter, masking the flavor of the fish, and served, inexplicably, with a meat-laden marinara sauce. Onion soup ($2.89) suffered from thickening in the bitter, bouillon-like broth and barely showed a trace of onion.

Only nine-layer dip ($6.29), a FRIDAY’S trusty original that combines refried beans, Cheddar cheese, guacamole, black olives, green onions, tomatoes and cilantro, could compete with the zucchini for highest awards, although its purported sour cream topping tasted perilously close to ranch dressing.

Two simple sandwiches--the char-grilled turkey ($6.79) and the plain hamburger ($4.49)--showed the range of the grill. The turkey, ground into a hamburger-like patty, was dry from over-grilling and in need of more than a too-sweet honey mustard dressing. The hamburger was the great FRIDAY’S burger of old: generously proportioned (one-third of a pound) and deeply satisfying in the char-grilling flavor. Accompanying fries ($1.29) were about as good as French fries get: potatoey and crisp, lightly salted.

Since its inception, FRIDAY’S has vastly expanded its menu to include fancier dinners. A selection from the LITE menu, Pacific coast tuna ($6.79), was smartly prepared in its al dente steamed vegetables but overcooked in a slim grilled tuna steak. Caesar salad with grilled chicken ($8.29) was sparklingly fresh in the grilled chicken (hot and charry and generously cut) and pungent in a light garlicky dressing.

Strangely, however, the same dish ordered with blackened tuna ($8.29) was a flop: the Caesar dressing was goopy, the Romaine lettuce less than fresh and the tuna cold, overdone, chopped into pieces, inedible.

Maple pecan glazed salmon ($11.49) was terrific: sea-fresh salmon filet, perfectly grilled to retain juices, and topped with an audaciously sweet sauce that managed not to topple complex fish flavors.

But FRIDAY’S London broil, described on the menu as marinated beef tenderloin ($11.49) and ordered medium-rare, arrived gray-brown throughout from overcooking; sent back, a new helping arrived seared outside and raw inside, and half-submerged in marinating liquid.

When that was sent back, the bent-on-glee servers brought out an entirely new choice, linguine with shrimp ($9.79), in which perfectly sauteed bay shrimp topped perfectly cooked pasta dressed in butter and herbs.

Everybody seemed happy, finally, that something matched its menu description, and indeed the oft-cited unseen manager went on to strike all sorts of charges from the tab without knowing that we were Times reviewers.

Still, there’s trouble in this new fun house. In a restaurant chain as well-thought-out as FRIDAY’S, as high on concept, as calculated in its food and drink, it really shouldn’t take so long to get things trim and up and running. We’ll eagerly watch to see if the staff is brought more to Earth and the kitchen gets under control. Only then will it be time to party.

Details

* WHAT: T.G.I. FRIDAY’S.

* WHERE: 2181 N. Rose Ave., Oxnard, 983-7366.

* FYI: Major credit cards. No reservations, but be prepared to wait on Fridays and weekends. Dinner for two, food only, $15 to $40.