RESTAURANTS : At China Palms, the Intrigue Is in the 2nd Menu

China Palms is quietly struggling to popularize authentic Chinese dishes in south Orange County. The battle is far from won.

The owners, Hong Kong-born Joseph and Gina Ling, once had a restaurant in Fullerton (like this one, named China Palms). There they were able to feature a variety of rustic Cantonese dishes, thanks to solid support from a large contingent of Chinese Americans living in nearby Walnut, Hacienda Heights and Whittier.

But their current restaurant, in a Laguna Hills shopping center that also houses an Elephant Bar and an Italian dinner house called Roma d’Italia, has a decidedly suburban-Chinese menu. Look to any table in this comfortable, brightly lit room, and chances are you’ll spot crowd-pleasers like honey walnut shrimp, aromatic hot and crispy chicken, fresh crab with ginger and scallion or whole steamed lobster a la Cantonese.

These are Chinese dishes, all right, and elegantly prepared. But they are also quite fanciful ones, far from the homey, straightforward fare you’d find on the typical Cantonese table. The Lings do offer fresh home-style dishes, but so far they have dared to list them only on a supplemental menu written in Chinese.

Why argue with success, one might ask? Two reasons. The first is simple enough--to satisfy that eternal craving for something new and different. That Chinese-language menu (which Gina Ling will translate for you) lists a number of intriguing dishes.

The second reason is that, in my experience, Chinese cooks put more heart into the dishes they prefer to eat. I’m not insisting that a first-time visitor to China Palms order exotic items such as chicken feet or sea cucumber, but I urge anyone with a curious bent to give China Palms’ supplemental menu a try.

There’s a fish tank, and you can get crab or lobster if you wish. I’m having (from the supplemental menu) the spiced salt fish: a whole channel cod or a red-tinged sea trout, pan-fried to a delicate crunch and served with a lively mix of salt, pepper and aromatic spices. The fish comes out on a platter topped with onions, hot peppers and fried scallions. The flesh, juicy under a light, crisp coating, falls off the bones when the skin is pierced.

And I’ll take the steamed spareribs over the cloying barbecued spareribs, or the Shanghai or Peking spareribs--two variations on fried, breaded pork in sticky sauce. Perhaps you’ve run into steamed ribs like these at a Chinese dim sum lunch, where they come chopped up and bone-in, a salty black bean sauce clinging to every inch of meat. Come to China Palms on weekends, when it serves more than a dozen types of Shanghai-style dumplings and draws a lot of Chinese customers, and you’ll probably see these ribs on every other table.

In Cantonese, minced pork cake goes by the long, difficult name of dung goo ha mai qing yuk beng , but the dish itself is blessed with the gift of simplicity. It looks like a foot-long sausage patty, served on a pool of steaming, oil-flecked pan drippings. When you bite in, though, you’d swear you were eating the world’s best meatloaf. This is country-style Chinese food, and goes perfectly with plain white rice and baby bok choy (a vegetable that the Lings mention only on the Chinese menu).

Though I’m particularly fond of such homey dishes from the Chinese-language menu, there certainly are scores of good dishes on the regular menu. The cold chicken in rice wine is terrific, and steamed dumplings are just fine too, with their thick skins and meaty interiors. China Palms makes possibly the most flavorful version of paper-wrapped chicken (chunks of chicken succulently cooked in foil) I’ve had in this country.

Minced seafood in lettuce leaf is an unusual starter of shrimp, scallops, rice noodles and pine nuts. Eat it in the lettuce leaves taco-style, with some penetrating plum sauce as salsa.

Westlake beef soup is a classic Sichuan dish. Traditionally, it’s shredded beef in a light broth frothed with egg white and laced with cilantro, but here it is done a little differently. Amid small clouds of egg white and minced beef, the kitchen adds a generous helping of tofu to the broth, so that the soup sticks stubbornly to the ribs.

A northern dish called four-season green bean is another must. This is string beans fried with chiles and combined with four condiments: pickled radish, ground pork, spring onion and dried shrimp. The beans snap like potato chips when you bite into them. It’s a sneakily hot dish that will have you reaching for a bottle of ice-cold Tsingtao, and it’s a natural match for four-season fried rice, which is mixed with vegetables, barbecued pork and baby shrimp.

The Lings are proud of something called honey walnut shrimp. These are plump, fresh shrimp glazed with a light, sweet coating of condensed milk and egg yolk, walled up by a moat of sweet, crispy walnuts. The walnuts have been boiled, then fried, then cooled in a mixture of honey and sugar. A lot of people like this dish but I find it contrived.

Among the better noodle and vegetable dishes are the mouthwatering chow fun rice noodles with barbecued pork; sauteed on choy , a leafy green vegetable with a sweet aftertaste; and the restaurant’s pure, healthful sauteed spinach, which the kitchen will prepare without oil, starch or sugar upon request.

Even when eating spinach, less is more.

China Palms is moderately priced. Appetizers are $3.75 to $7.50. Soups for two to four are $5.50 or $6.50. Main dishes are $6.25 to $16.95.

* CHINA PALMS

* 25254 La Paz Road, Laguna Hills.

* (714) 470-0392.

* Open daily, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.

* All major cards.