RESTAURANT REVIEW : Glitzy, but Not Ritzy : Restaurant menu has something to please everyone. The decor focuses on star-studded Hollywood.

Favoritz, a glitzy Promenade Mall space with a theater theme, has a please-everyone menu--a healthy mix of burgers, pizzas, pastas and grilled fish--that is just perf for kids and families. If Fox were doing a sitcom about eating at the mall, this is exactly the kind of place a team of writers would dream up.

Here it’s for real, though. The restaurant is the brainchild of Joe Knight, the same man who started the Seafood Broiler chain.

The concept is apparently to evoke a studio commissary (with better food, one hopes). While I waited for my friends to arrive one evening, sitting at the restaurant’s empty espresso bar and staring at a jar of biscotti , I occasionally thumbed through a back issue of Billboard magazine that was lying around. Hey, did you know that Celine Dion is a big hit in the Netherlands?

They’ve laid on the hooray-for-Hollywood theme a bit thick, these people have. The bar area has 16 TV screens (count ‘em) lined up one on top of another in rows of four, just the way they would be in an ultra-modern disco, plus a dense tangle of theatrical overhead lighting for further effect. One wall is a depiction of the Hollywood sign at dusk, another is filled with a collage made out of industry magazines.

Even the drop ceiling gets into the act. Look up and you’ll see little stars carved into the white tiles. At last, a restaurant where you can be sure of seeing stars.

Sit yourself down in one of the restaurant’s ersatz rattan chairs (they’re actually plastic) and join the crowd. This is a local bunch, all right; lots of casual shirts, teensy glasses and Bermudas. The customers look as if they’ve come over directly from a West Valley country club.

The aspiring waiters and waitresses work tables together at Favoritz, and though they’re a nice, friendly bunch, the buddy system occasionally leads to crossed signals. Our 9-year-old guest, for instance, had to wait 10 forlorn minutes after the rest of us had been served our main courses before he got his trencherman-size bowl of chicken tortellini. Another time, I ended up having to ask three waiters just to get myself a glass of ice.

Nothing on the menu here will set you on your ear, but the food is certainly pleasant enough. Everybody gets a basket of chewy pizza bread cut into thin wedges, with just enough cheese baked on to make it interesting. The chicken pot stickers are nondescript, and inoffensive as long as you do not dip them in the hideously gluey and sour plum sauce that comes along.

The kids (myself included) loved the beer-batter onion rings as well as the tangy barbecue sauce for dipping them in. However, neither the bland four-cheese pizza nor the gooey barbecued chicken pizza pleased anyone enough to eat a second piece.

*

The salads, served in full or half portions, are slightly better. Thai noodle salad is a mix of grilled chicken, fried noodles, thin-sliced vegetables, peanuts and a dressing that is supposed to be spicy. This salad gets better as you reach the bottom of the bowl.

A chopped salad made with smoked provolone and turkey salami is interesting, and the grilled vegetable plate, with peppers, zucchini, eggplant, red onion and a balsamic vinaigrette, is certainly decent. A dinner salad comes with most entrees, and you can choose good dressings like Caesar or poppy seed for it.

The entrees are substantial, and many come with tasty garlic mashed potatoes. Fish are charbroiled and remind me of the ones you get at Seafood Broiler to this day, distinguished by a light sprinkling of paprika and other spices. I’ve had both Idaho trout and eastern swordfish from Favoritz’s menu and both were properly moist and flavorful.

From the broiler comes a 14-ounce T-bone (rather tough) and half a fine roasted chicken, perfumed from skin to bone with smoke. You can get a full slab of baby back ribs here for only $12.95, and it will be basted with the same barbecue sauce served with the onion rings. Among the better pastas at Favoritz are the cheesy ravioli in marinara sauce (great kid food) and the aforementioned huge bowl of chicken tortellini, tossed with a confetti of peppers.

Kids seem to favor the crackly, tube-like chocolate cannoli for dessert, but you could also get an apple torte or a New York-style cheesecake from the Cheesecake Factory. If I had a choice, I’d take a slice of Favoritz’s rich, fudgy chocolate cake, or perhaps one of the custard-filled eclairs. No autographs, please.

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WHERE AND WHEN

What: Favoritz.

Location: Promenade Mall (corner of Oxnard Street and Topanga Canyon Boulevard), Woodland Hills.

Suggested Dishes: beer-batter onion rings, $4.25; cheese ravioli, $7.95; half roasted chicken, $10.95; swordfish, $14.95.

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

Price: Dinner for two, $17 to $36. Full bar. Parking lot. All major cards.

Call: (818) 313-8580.