RESTAURANT REVIEW : A Hankering for Hungarian : Hearty soups, stews and pastas are served up in abundance at The Hortobagy.

You may have eaten at The Hortobagy already and think you know all about it. Think again. The menu has expanded beyond the massive Hungarian meat dishes, such as Hortobagy wooden plate, that first made this modest cafe famous.

Master chef Laszlo Bossanyi and his assistant, Katalin Teszar, are pulling out all the stops in this narrow, homey room decorated with hand-carved wooden wainscoting and rustic folk paintings. Together the chefs prepare a daily menu of abundant riches: pastas, stews, schnitzels and a variety of fabled Hungarian pastries.

Their only real concession to modern sensibilities is using vegetable oil in place of the traditional lard in these recipes. Recent visitors to Budapest have reported that even in the capital of Hungarian cuisine the use of tasty pork fat is falling into disuse. Who’d ever have expected it?

Hungarian cuisine stands as one of the world’s heaviest even without the use of lard, so you may want to dine at The Hortobagy soon, before the weather gets too warm. Much of what The Hortobagy serves is better suited to the cold, wind-swept Hungarian prairie, for which the restaurant is named, than to sunny California.

It’s clear, for instance, that such dishes as duck crackling ( kacsa toportyu ) and hoop cheese ( korozott ) were not created for our summers. The first is a hearty spread consisting mostly of duck fat mixed with bits of crisp fried duck skin. Hoop cheese is like German farmer’s cheese. Think of something halfway between cottage cheese and sour cream, tinted a pale pink with paprika. Both duck crackling and hoop cheese are sensational on the thin-sliced, extra-chewy house bread.

Hungary is famous for hearty soups, but its noodle dishes, characteristic of the country’s southeastern region, are equally deserving of notice. Who could resist a dish like turos csusza (fettuccine with cottage cheese, sour cream and crisp bacon), especially when it turns out to be almost feather-light? And check out the somewhat unpronounceable husos derelye csirkevel toltve , which shows that a few of the city’s nouvelle American chefs could take a lesson from this kitchen when it comes to stuffing a noodle. These chicken ravioli are the perfect size, cooked perfectly al dente and almost other-worldly in flavor, thanks to a light paprika cream sauce.

The goulash soup (spelled gulyas in Hungarian; pronounce it goo-yahsh if you want to get a smile from your waitress) is brought to the table in a bogracs kettle (pronounced bo-grahtch ). You ladle this beefy, spicy broth into your bowl along with chunks of beef and potato. Another good soup, chicken soup Ujhazi-style, is based on a concentrated chicken stock. It comes chock-full of sliced chicken dark meat, carrots, celery, green peas, fava beans and deliciously wispy homemade noodles.

Halfway between soup and entree is one of my favorite items here, halaszle bogracsban , also known as Hungarian bouillabaisse. This time the kettle is stocked with fish, usually sea bass, as well as noodles, vegetables, a light broth and a few pieces of chicken.

From the grill, the Gypsy pork steak is thick and well browned, served in its own juice with parsley, potato and bell peppers. The farmer’s plate is mostly homemade liver and pork sausages, both of them ruddy with paprika and generously marbled with fat. The famous Hortobagy wooden plate ( fatanyeros ) borders on the obscene. It is an almost unimaginable carbo-protein blowout for two--an architectural marvel more than a foot high consisting of breaded meats, fried potatoes and red cabbage.

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Among the stews, the tasty chicken paprikas is a disjointed chicken stewed with onions, pepper, tomatoes, sour cream and paprika. Think of it as an enriched version of chicken cacciatore, and ask to have it served with the tiny egg dumplings called tarhonya. Other good choices are the exquisite veal-stuffed cabbage rolls and the gombas marhaszelet , beef brisket cooked in a rich mushroom ragout until it falls apart.

Above all, consider the Transylvanian goulash--technically, Szegedi gulyas , a specialty of the region of Szeged and one of Hungary’s truly distinctive peasant dishes. It’s pork slowly cooked with sweetened sauerkraut, caraway seeds and an abundance of sour cream. Most people like to cut the richness with a sour salad of cucumber or beets. Take your pick; the kitchen usually has both.

There’s no cutting the richness of the desserts. Whether you get the seven-layer chocolate Dobos torte, with its crackling, caramelized top layer, or one of the strudels (apple, sour cherry, poppy seed), or the amazing chestnut puree, which arrives in squiggles atop a sea of whipped cream, these are the natural-born killers of the dessert world.

The waitress merely rolled her eyes when we ordered palascinta , Hungarian crepes filled with crushed walnuts and apricot jam, after polishing off slices of a buttery nut roll.

“Don’t you eat crepes?” one of my guests asked her, with a guilty smile.

“I eat a lot of cucumbers,” she said, wearily.

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Where and When

Location: The Hortobagy, 11138 Ventura Blvd., Studio City.

Suggested dishes: Chicken soup Ujhazi style, $3.50/bowl, $5/kettle; chicken ravioli, $9.25; Hungarian bouillabaisse, $9.80; Transylvanian goulash, $11.95; desserts, $2.95 to $4.

Hours: Lunch and dinner 11:30 a.m. to 11:30 p.m. Tuesday to Sunday. 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. Monday.

Price: Dinner for two, $22 to $37. Beer and wine. Small rear parking lot. MasterCard and Visa.

Call: (818) 980-2273.