RESTAURANT REVIEW : Antartica Plays One Note Well : The fish and ceviche bar is lively and appealing. Entrees are the winners in this environment.

First there was Amazon, a Boulevard restaurant designed like a rain forest, promising to share profits with envi ronmental groups. Now there is the new fish and ceviche restaurant Antartica (yes, they leave out the c in the second syllable), whose menu fairly lectures us about a “setting an example for a responsible approach to the relationship between humans and Planet Earth.” Works fine, unless you happen to be a fish.

I don’t mean to take the environmentalist approach lightly, and in fact I like the idea of a fish and ceviche bar. But we should take note that Antartica is owned and operated by the same company that runs the Gaucho Grill chain of Argentine steak houses. And you won’t see anybody reading “Diet for a Small Planet” in one of those places.

I must say I had a reasonably swell time at Antartica. It is a lively, as it were, environment--I rather enjoyed the upbeat yet detached attitude of the T-shirt-clad Generation X-ers who make up the staff. And the food is tasty, though it tends to be on a single note.

The restaurant has a corrugated metal exterior, like a beach shack you might see in Jamaica or Panama. Inside, the color scheme is the soothing blue-green of a tropical sea. Dozens of fishnets hang from a partially exposed beam ceiling, and Diva lights are strung overhead; the hand-painted tile floor is agreeably funky. One more little touch might amuse the keen observer. Behind the handsomely tiled ceviche bar, cute little fish have been stamped into the sheet metal hood over the kitchen ranges.

I’d start a meal here by ordering an ice-cold Antarctica, a heady Brazilian lager beer. Then I’d pop a few crunchy round tostadas into my mouth and get into the rhythms of Nana, a Mexican band favored as background music here. That alone should get almost anyone ready for a seafaring excursion.

Zero in on camarones al mojo Guayaquil and miniaturas Punta del Este at appetizer time. The first is a small bowl of indescribably delicious shrimp and baby scallops, covered up by a sensuously addictive sauce made almost entirely of crushed garlic. The miniaturas are edible objets d’art. This time the tender scallops are paired with baby squid, both lightly breaded and delicately fried, mimicking a top-notch French friture . A fine homemade tartar sauce is the perfect complement.

The restaurant’s ceviches are clean-tasting and definitely fresh but, for me, uniformly uninteresting. Ceviche Lima de pescado , for instance, is a big dish of snapper and squid that has been marinated in lime juice, with additional ingredients such as boiled potato, cilantro and hot chilies trying to enliven the plate. Unfortunately, the attempt doesn’t succeed. The seafood flavor is overwhelmed by the lime juice, and one’s palate soon longs for a break in the monotony.

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All the ceviches, whether made from shrimp, octopus or a mixture of seafoods, have the same problem. They are tasty for a few bites but in dire need of the kitchen’s fine pico de gallo (or some generic hot sauce) to give them a little spark.

The platos principales (entrees) fare somewhat better. Mostly, they’re fresh fish cooked in various styles and served with fine, fluffy rice and a chopped cucumber and tomato salad that reminds me of Shirazi salad, something you get with kebabs in a Persian restaurant. The best of them is probably huachinango frito , a lightly breaded whole Gulf snapper deep-fried to a golden crunch. It may not be as garlicky as you’d find at a Mexican beach fish shack, but it is definitely a good piece of fish.

Pargo rojo a la plancha is a filet of snapper nicely grilled with olive oil and lemon juice. The charbroiled el rey salmon comes with a pungent warm garlic sauce, while trucha (trout) is buttered, grilled and sprinkled with black pepper. About the only entree I wouldn’t order again is lenguado Antartica. This grilled sole has a burnished brown finish and a side of good grilled onions, but the end result is bland and not like anything from the sea--it’s fish for people who don’t like fish.

If you don’t fill up on tostadas, you’ll surely be able to manage one of Antartica’s winning desserts. One day at lunch I had a wonderful pale orange mango sorbet, a subtly sweet creation that completely captured the essence of the tropics. On another visit, I had a custardy wedge of Key lime pie--the best version of this dessert I’ve tasted in Los Angeles. So what if it is named after a vanishing (tree) species.

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WHERE AND WHEN

What: Antartica.

Location: 11838 Ventura Blvd., Studio City.

Suggested dishes: camarones al mojo Guayaquil, $4.50; miniaturas Punta del Este, $3.50; huachinango frito , $9.95; Key lime pie, $3.50.

Hours: Lunch and dinner 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday to Thursday, 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Friday to Saturday.

Price: Dinner for two, $18 to $32. Beer and wine. Parking lot. American Express, MasterCard and Visa.

Call: (818) 508-7536.