Valley Weekend : RESTAURANT REVIEW : Chinese Food Prepared With a Korean Flavor : The dishes of seafood, meats and vegetables are clean-tasting and carefully spiced.

Add the name China Garden to your short list of the San Fernando Valley’s best Chinese restaurants. It shares a little history with two of the restaurants already on my own list, Jin Hung Won and Great Wall. All three are owned by Chinese families who have emigrated to the United States from Korea.

Most Korean-born Chinese have roots in the northern Chinese province of Shandong, where a seafood-rich, occasionally fiery cooking style predominates. That ethnicity includes China Garden’s owners, chef Pai Lee and wife Susie, who have transformed a location formerly home to the Italian restaurant Divino and turned it into an upscale showplace of etched glass and lush plants.

Indeed, at first glance China Garden looks more like the atrium lobby of an exclusive shopping mall than a Chinese restaurant. The left side of the room is a mezzanine, where tables roost in partial seclusion. The main dining area is crowded with undersized booths and large round tables. Though there are Lazy Susans in the middle of the tables, the waiters dish out the food with large spoons, as in a formal European dining room.

You can start your feast with a bowl of mixed pickled vegetables, more or less Chinese-style kimchi. It’s served only on request; Mrs. Lee may be reluctant to serve it to you if she fears you might find it too pungent, but it’s an easy argument to win.

Lee’s food is clean-tasting, carefully spiced, sparing in the use of sugar, MSG and oil. A few of the chef’s dishes shine with distinctly Korean influences. A mustard-infused oddity called liang chang pee resembles the royal Korean dish gu jul pan ; both are julienned meats and vegetables beautifully arranged on round platters. And this is one of the few Chinese restaurants around to offer spicy fried bean sprouts with fagara peppers. Korean cuisine makes much more use of bean sprouts than does Chinese.

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Aromatic beef would be one of my choices from the long appetizer list. The beef (served cold) is a stack of thin, perfectly cooked slices of tender brisket, shot through with the perfumes of star anise and fresh garlic. The meat is lean and crumbly, and the hot sweet cucumber relish underneath the slices is a revelation.

You’d better fancy peanuts if you order the equally good Mandarin noodle salad, which features handmade noodles fashioned by the chef himself, cooked al dente and thoroughly moistened with a delicate but assertive peanut dressing. Like the beef, it comes cold with cucumbers, this time cut into tiny spears.

Nothing at China Garden impressed me more than the Peking duck. At $24.95, it is a big-ticket item, but one look at the elaborate presentation makes the price seem reasonable. Chef Lee first crisps the skin by air-drying the duck in classic fashion, then removes the meat from the bones.

Your waiter smears the first of a long succession of crepes with a dab of plum sauce, places a few scallions in the center, then a slice of skin and a piece of meat, and rolls up his creation with practiced skill. The dish easily serves four, and is reason enough to visit the restaurant.

Lee also has a way with vegetables. The exemplary cut spears of sauteed asparagus taste only of garlic, oil and asparagus. Sauteed string beans are prepared in a classic Sichuan sauce that is redolent of chiles and bean paste. You can have your eggplant with either brown or garlic sauce (and eat it too).

Seafoods are another specialty of this chef. He fries soft shell crab to a soft crunch and drapes it with a spicy red sauce. He can steam you a whole fresh fish (usually rock cod) and serve it au naturel, with a touch of shredded ginger and a few green onions, or smothered with an unctuous black bean sauce.

Abalone is available sauteed with sea cucumber or as a cold dish, in both cases at a premium price of $17.95.

My favorite seafood dish is the understated shrimp with Hunan sauce. The flavorful shrimp are tossed with onion, carrot, fagara pepper and hot bean paste, a perfect marriage.

Sometimes, I have to say, Lee slips up. His Hunan-style lamb is tough and the flavor of the meat has been lost, while the homemade noodle with seafood dish is done in by a dark, overwhelming sauce.

But in general, China Garden reinforces my theory that Chinese cooking, Korean-style, is nothing short of terrific. It’s a theory I’m glad to test, any day of the week.

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DETAILS

* WHERE: China Garden, 21618 Ventura Blvd., Woodland Hills.

* WHEN: 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 11 a.m.-10:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday.

* HOW MUCH: Dinner for two, $18-$35.

* FYI: Full bar. Parking in rear lot. Suggested dishes: aromatic beef $4.95 (small portion)/$8.25 (large); Mandarin noodle salad, $5.95; Peking duck, $24.95; sauteed string beans Sichuan sauce, $6.25.

* CALL: (818) 347-0100.