VALLEY WEEKEND : RESTAURANT REVIEW : Atmosphere Delicious at Inn of the Seventh Ray : Nestled in a spectacular setting, the establishment is filled with New Age nuances. The food is less uplifting.

“This is what California is all about,” sighed a friend visiting from Chicago as we relaxed on the terrace at the Inn of the Seventh Ray.

I couldn’t agree more. The Inn of the Seventh Ray, now 20 years old, is one of the loveliest restaurants I’ve ever seen. It’s located halfway up Topanga Canyon, six miles from the ocean, seven from Ventura Boulevard. The climate is distinctly unlike anywhere else in the county, more like someplace on the Central Coast.

The setting is spectacular, a quiet hillside of majestic sycamores next to a quiet brook. You enter through a New Age bookstore named the Spiral Staircase, where, if you are so inclined, you can buy incense, “Free Tibet” bumper stickers or personal-growth books on the way to your table. You’d never guess that this building was once a garage.

Perhaps it is comforting to know that the restaurant’s name refers, with apologies to Alice Walker, to the color violet. Light, a hostess informed me, breaks up into seven rays when refracted through a prism. The seventh, or violet, ray is synonymous with spiritual enlightenment.

What you eat here is not likely to be quite as uplifting. The menu serves a mix of vegan, macrobiotic and conventional entrees, running the gamut from a “karma-free” burger, made from the glutinous wheat byproduct known as seitan, to a garden-variety New York steak, and the quality is varied.

By all means sit outside, if the evening isn’t too chilly. There are heat lamps by most of the (violet-clad) tables, and strings of round light bulbs provide a warm glow. But if the Topanga air is simply too nippy, ask for the Church Room, a wooden A-frame complete with stained-glass window and wood-burning fireplace. On a cool, moonless night, this simply has to be Southern California’s most romantic dining spot.

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Since entrees run from $19 to $28, your first thought may be to pass on appetizers, which are rather pricey ($9 to $10). The appetizers are quite good, however. “Corn turnovers,” served in red pepper champagne sauce, are really crusty little empanadas with deliciously spiced sweet corn in the centers. Portobello mushrooms come with a clump of goat cheese and, unfortunately, an oddball organic apricot sauce. The sauce would be fine on yogurt or perhaps on an English muffin, but does not at all suit these fine, meaty grilled mushrooms. Entrees, listed in the “order of their esoteric vibrations,” come with soup or salad, and the soup choices are certainly unconventional. One evening there was a thick grainy potage of carrots with a mild curry seasoning. Another evening, the choice was broccoli cashew--faintly herbal, oddly bitter, pureed to a smooth richness.

Heading the entree list is Maitreya’s feast: grilled eggplant with couscous, both brown and wild rice and pine nuts and cashews. A macrobiotic vegan entree named Five Secret Rays is essentially skewers of grilled mushrooms, bell peppers and eggplant served with brown rice and black beans.

The last entree on the list is the New York steak, a mere 10 ounces of good-quality beef smothered with fresh mushrooms at the outrageous price of $23.95. Another choice for non-vegans is chicken rosemary, range-fed chicken roasted in the oven along with way too much of the dried herb, imparting an unpleasant aftertaste.

The roast duck with a sweet raspberry sauce is rather good. Cajun Soul doesn’t have much (soul, that is)--it is pasty udon noodles with turkey sausage flavored principally with nutmeg. But Artichoke, Queen of Light (in another life, perhaps, the title of a Roger Corman film), is pleasant, despite its excessively flamboyant name. It is a not very interesting whole artichoke filled with diced tofu and various chopped vegetables.

There are lots of nice touches here, anyway. Meals begin with raw vegetables plus a black and green olive tapenade, and all plates come with steamed vegetables and a delicious tahineh dipping sauce. If you are not a wine drinker, you’ll be pleased with beverages like Reed’s Ginger Ale, nonalcoholic raspberry wine and imported beer, also alcohol free. And then there are the desserts, which are all good: macadamia nut pie, peach mango pie, raspberry fruit crisp (with an oat crust) and several others. No aerosol whipped cream here, of course, but hand-whipped heavy cream smothering your pastries the way they would be smothered in Vienna--the Old World Meets the New Age. (Hey, there’s a concept.)

DETAILS

* WHAT: Inn of the Seventh Ray.

* WHERE: 128 Old Topanga Road, Topanga.

* WHEN: Lunch 11:30 a.m.-3 p.m. Monday-Friday, 10:30 a.m.-3 p.m. Saturday; dinner 6-10 p.m. daily; brunch 9:30 a.m.-3 p.m. Sunday.

* SUGGESTED DISHES: Corn turnovers in red pepper champagne sauce, $8.95; Maitreya’s feast, $19.95; duckling, $24.95.

* HOW MUCH: Dinner for two, $42-$69. Beer and wine only.

* FYI: (310) 455-1311.