RESTAURANTS : Irvine’s Tampopo: It Looks Shallow but Uses Its Noodle

Tampopo has come to Irvine. That’s Tampopo the ramen shop, the newest member of a growing Southland chain of Japanese noodle houses. The name comes, of course, from the title of the popular Japanese film about the quest for the perfect noodle, written and directed by auteur filmmaker Juzo Itami.

It’s important to remember the idiom when eating here. Tampopo is home to hearty, humble Japanese food.

But one doesn’t expect total cultural authenticity in an Irvine shopping center. The sign above the door is engraved with the words Ramen Restaurant , no doubt because someone figured simply putting the name Tampopo on the door wouldn’t ring enough bells with passersby.

Then there is the matter of this restaurant’s oddly garish decor: robin’s-egg-blue vinyl booths, shiny chrome, an abundance of mirrors and strings of lights overhead. On my first visit, I felt momentarily disoriented. Tampopo looks like an off-Strip coffee shop in Vegas, not a working-class Tokyo ramen-ya.

The feeling doesn’t last long. You can’t miss the characteristic paper signs posted on the wall, just as you’d find in nearly every small restaurant in Japan. They’re advertisements for various daily specials (fortunately, here they’re bilingual). The tables are stocked with authentic ramen shop condiments: the zesty, peppery powder known as shichimi (literally, seven spices) and the cruets of pepper oil, rice vinegar and soy sauce. Just past the entrance is another distinctive Japanese touch: a huge display of foods in soup bowls and lacquer trays, wax replicas of what you are about to eat.

We shouldn’t overlook the staff, which is young, polite and somewhat less than helpful. Ask employees about the dishes and they mostly fidget. One of my friends wanted to know what Tampopo meant in Japanese. “It’s just a name,” said our waitress.

What’s in a name? The mall housing Tampopo is named Orange Tree Square, but the menu has it written up as Orange Free Square, an unwitting reference to a place in southern Africa that contributes one more classic to the storehouse of eccentric Japanese twists on the king’s English. (My all-time favorite is a popular health drink sold all over Japan under the English name Sweat.)

Most of the Japanese customers seem to be ordering ramen , the homemade house specialty. There’s no doubt about why. Ramen --jumbles of long, chewy wheat noodles in a garlic and salt broth, topped with a choice of treats from spicy tofu to seafood to barbecued pork with vegetables--is truly a meal in a bowl.

The simplest way to try ramen is in a soy broth (look for shoyu ramen on the menu). Combine this with an order of some delicate Japanese-style pot stickers ( gyoza ), lighter and less oily than their Chinese counterparts, and you have a fine, filling lunch.

Char-shu ramen comes with Chinese-style barbecued pork in thin slices. Wakame ramen is flavored by the pungent seaweed that translates to sea tangle in English. The kitchen will make any ramen without MSG, but you have to ask first. Note: The house dashi (soup stock) contains a healthy dose.

For those who don’t fancy ramen , there is lots more to eat here. First off, there are some of the salty Japanese pub snacks. Edamame are salted soy beans in the shell. You pop them into your mouth between sips of ice cold beer. Hijiki is a slippery seaweed, served in a bowl. At Tampopo, hijiki is flavored with fish and mixed with vinegar and diced vegetables.

Several working-class Japanese lunch foods are offered as well. One is the typical Japanese student meal, curry rice. What you get is a huge plate of rice half covered with a brown, pasty sauce laced with bits of pork, carrot and onion. This is heavy stuff, redolent of ginger, pepper and aromatic spices--a carbo loader’s dream.

I prefer yakisoba , fried buckwheat noodles with soy, pepper and red ginger. These chewy, nutritious noodles are sold outside many Japanese train stations because they are such a satisfying snack.

Tampopo also serves a number of foods that in Japan you would order in a specialty restaurant or sushi bar. Tempura, which the Portuguese brought to Japan in the days of the shoguns, is fish or vegetables deep-fried in a light batter; unfortunately, Tampopo’s tempura is leaden. Saba is a good value here. For $2.50, Tampopo will make you a freshly cooked chunk of this flavorful Spanish mackerel, along with a tastily stewed round of daikon radish.

Japanese lunch boxes are another possibility. One day, I had a tray containing batter-fried chicken, rice studded with black sesame, two kinds of Japanese pickles, a salad with a pleasantly bland take on Thousand Island dressing, the rolled-up egg cake called tamagoyaki and a cube of cold tofu ( hiyayakko )--a sort of deluxe Japanese TV dinner. A bowl of miso soup rounds everything out. Tampopo will make up lunch trays with salmon, fish cakes, mackerel, whatever is on hand.

For those who simply have to have it, Tampopo has put a number of hand-rolled sushi items on the menu, most notably flying fish egg, salmon skin, sea eel and the notorious California roll. I must admit I didn’t try any of them. For one thing, a top local sushi bar, Taiko, is in the mall just across the street. For another, I don’t go to a ramen shop for sushi.

Tampopo is inexpensive to moderate. Ramen are $4.25 to $5.95. Combination lunches are $7.50 to $8.50. Hand-rolled sushi is $1.95 to $3.25.

* TAMPOPO

* 5408 Walnut Ave., Irvine.

* (714) 559-1028.

* Lunch and dinner 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday.

* MasterCard and Visa.