Soup, Salad and Then Some : California Fresh has taken the basics and added roast turkey and beef plus breads, pastas and fruits.

At California Fresh Cafe, a veritable Niagara of food awaits anyone with the ability to slide a tray. Think of this place as a ‘90s wrinkle on that ‘80s phenom, the soup and salad buffet. Only with a face lift.

During the past decade, chains like Souplantation and Soup Exchange grew rapidly, extending the garden variety salad bar with an array of homemade soups. In the heat of competition, both those chains eventually added non-soup, non-salad items such as pastas and baked potatoes with a million toppings, to name just two. (Take that logic a little further and the sky’s the limit. Last time I was in Vegas, I actually sampled the wares at a caviar bar. No kidding. It’s in the Riviera Hotel and Casino.)

Onward and upward. California Fresh Cafe--at the moment not a chain but strictly an Encino operation--is notable for excellent value and the odd innovative touch. For one, there’s a carving board here (surprise; the salad bar genre began as a protein-phobic concept), complete with crisp-skinned roast turkey and nicely browned rounds of roast beef. I’m further amused by the logo over the front door, a cartoonish version of Mr. Carrot and Mrs. Tomato. The happy vegetables are depicted as a hand-holding beach couple, smartly decked out in His and Hers sunglasses and ready to rumble.

Maybe you’ll be primed for a strut down the beach after a few passes at this food line. Myself, I needed a nice nap. The food is consistently fresh-tasting, so overdoing it seems almost inevitable. Most customers I saw were loading up on the fresh-cut vegetables, salads, soups, fresh-baked breads, pastas, fruits, puddings and anything else not tied down, piling their plates to giddy heights in a manner that would make high-rise architect Philip Johnson envious.

But if a little salad is all you want, better jam the gearbox in reverse. Salad used to be the idea, remember?

It’s easy to forget. Sensible intentions fade quickly in this enormous green-carpeted room, a long, sprawling, rather sterile space filled with nondescript wooden chairs and a gallery of framed prints that wouldn’t look out of place in the lobby of any Midwestern Holiday Inn.

Here the visitor finds himself undistractedly confronted by food, food, food: in the salad bar, romaine and iceberg lettuce, fresh spinach greens, a muscular hand-mixed Caesar with crushed garlic clinging to the greens, a well-crafted Chinese chicken salad, three kinds of sprouts, intensely red chopped tomatoes (that manage not to taste ripe anyway), peppers greener than Kermit, seeds, croutons, bacon bits . . . even a stainless steel tub of dried bananas.

That section gives way to prepared salads: old-fashioned macaroni salad with cubed American cheese, tuna tarragon salad (using fat shell pasta), a somewhat neutral Thai noodle salad in search of a few drops of sesame oil, an old-fashioned vinegary coleslaw that looks unusually American under the circumstances.

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Toss everything around with one of the unctuous homemade dressings, if you want. I’d recommend French if you don’t want to get exotic. If you do, try the raspberry dressing, or perhaps the tangy orange dressing, an Oriental-tasting blend of orange juice, rice vinegar, soy, basil and lemon grass.

Now you are ready for the soup section. The soups are made fresh daily and taste it. The usual choices are filling but uninspired: a meaty chicken noodle, a celery-rich clam chowder, a vegetarian chili full of brown rice. I’m more fond of the heavily pureed cream of broccoli, but my personal favorite would be the excellent tortilla soup. It’s a burnished red liquid fragrant of cumin that you crown with salty little strips.

The bread stand is next, featuring little loaves of corn bread, pizza, focaccia bread (called garlic pizza here), chocolate chip muffins and assorted whipped butters to smear on them. The breads are fine, as long as you get at a recent batch.

After this farinaceous bacchanal, head over to the fruit and dessert stations, where you will be confronted by grapes, overripe fresh-cut pineapple, tapioca pudding, tropical fruit salad, granola and two flavors of yogurt.

Me, I’ll be out looking for that perfect plate of greens--the one subtly dribbled with a master chef’s exquisite shallot vinaigrette. This is one concept, I hear, that has not yet hit Vegas.

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WHERE AND WHEN

What: California Fresh Cafe.

Location: 17815 Ventura Blvd., Encino.

Hours: Lunch 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily; dinner 4 to 9 p.m. Sunday to Thursday, 4 to 10 p.m Friday to Saturday.

Price: Lunch buffet $5.99; dinner buffet, $6.99. Drinks not included. Parking in structure. Beer and wine only. MasterCard and Visa.

Call: (818) 377-2290.