Boisterous, TV-Laden Champps Puts the Din in Dinner

IRVINE —  It was 9 p.m. Saturday and the New York Yankees were taking the field for the final inning of the 1996 World Series. I could barely hear my friends across the table. War whoops already had begun to reverberate from wall to wall.

We were seated in the top tier at Champps Americana, perhaps the busiest restaurant in the entire Irvine Spectrum complex. In front of me was an enormous, futuristic TV monitor divided into six screens, each carrying a different sporting event. Just to my right was a display kitchen, where a team of chefs in baseball caps toiled behind an enormous plate-glass wall. Behind me and two tiers down, a boisterous young crowd stood four deep at a long, four-sided bar. It’s a restaurant from a Philip K. Dick sci-fi future.

Champps Americana actually would call itself a sports bar restaurant, if you want to get technical. I counted more than two dozen TV screens in all, and on my butcher-papered table, a brochure-filled glass trumpeted a host of activities that have their own special nights of the week: Super Karaoke Night, Monday Night Football, even Del Mar Racing Night. This is no place for a quiet dinner (though on the other hand, it’s virtually impossible to be bored here).

I can’t say it’s a comfortable room, but the design certainly is distinctive. The dining area is divided into three levels bounded by long brass railings, like terraced rice paddies in the highlands of Bali or maybe successively higher rows in some gigantic bleachers.

Once you find the door (it’s just to the right of and around the corner from the outdoor patio), you enter a podium area where T-shirts, sweats and other gear with the Champps Americana logo is sold. Because there is often a wait for tables (an impressive fact, when you consider the restaurant’s enormous size), you have a chance to note that Christmas lights and mistletoe hang from the ceiling for a bit of early holiday cheer.

You wouldn’t expect a concept like this to be linked with a modest menu, and it isn’t. It would take studied patience to read all the way through this long and diverse listing.

Call the cuisine 21st century Americana. The salads, soups, sandwiches, pastas, pizzas, main courses and desserts show influences from the four corners of the earth; you can find anything from Sichuan stir-fries and Greek salads to a New Orleans muffaletta sandwich. Portions tend to be large: onion rings big enough to put your fist through, half-pound burgers on giant buns, salads that easily would serve three.

Some foods also can be, in the hallowed sports bar tradition, terrifically salty. A meatloaf tasted as if it had been baked in a salt crust. Five-cheese pasta--big tubes of rigatoni, cooked perfectly al dente--included ham and a salty cream sauce as well as (salty) melted cheeses.

But many dishes at Champps Americana are surprisingly good. The soups, for instance, all are delicious. I can’t remember when I’ve had a better Southwestern black bean soup, and the thick corn chowder and chunky potato soup are neither salty nor gluey but full flavored and comforting.

The pizzas, too, are just fine, especially the thin-crust New York-style pizzas where you build your own toppings.

If you want to load up on fried stuff, there is Champps’ sampler platter: mozzarella sticks, chicken fingers, Buffalo wings and potato skins, four of each, with sides of marinara sauce, barbecue sauce, blue cheese dressing and seasoned sour cream. This may not be on the American Heart Assn.’s list of recommended dishes, but it’s definitely good sports bar food. Only the potato skins fail to pass muster: These limp potato halves drip with lifeless, gooey yellow cheese.

The salads come with unctuous, intensely flavored dressings, the two best being sesame and creamy peppercorn. Alex’s Greek salad boasts 21 ingredients including Kalamata olives and fresh-tasting cubes of feta in a subtle vinaigrette. Another to rely on is antipasto chop salad, an Italianate creation of mixed greens, provolone, salami, turkey, marinated vegetables and spiced beans.

A warning: If a dish sounds too good to be true here, it probably is. Italian bruschetta is six huge pieces of toasted Italian bread, each topped with a heap of chopped tomatoes . . . and an unspeakably sweet balsamic vinegar dressing. Crab bread is, in effect, a crab version of tuna melt, but made with too much mayo and too much cheese. The Sichuan stir-fry is heavy and salty; these vegetables have absorbed too much oil.

But anything from the grill is dependable. There’s a variety of good burgers, the filet mignon sandwich is nearly perfect, and you can get a pair of double-thick Cajun pork chops weighing a whopping 10 ounces apiece.

The desserts have rather rowdy names, such as Chocolate Ice Cream Collision, Enough to Die For and Messy Sundae. My choice would be plain old Key lime pie. The crumb crust is nice and the citrus filling is creamy, and it’s the only dessert I tried here that doesn’t taste of canned whipped cream and canned chocolate sauce.

I wonder how crazy it would have gotten in here if it had been the Angels who won the Series. There’s a real fantasy.

Champps Americana is moderately priced. Sides and Starters are $2.50 to $9.95. Salads are $3.50 to $9.25. Main courses are $8.50 to $15.95. Desserts are $3.95 to $4.95.

* CHAMPPS AMERICANA

* 51 Fortune Drive, Suite 500, Irvine.

* (714) 453-9333.

* 11 a.m.-1 a.m. Mondays-Thursdays; till 2 a.m. Fridays-Saturdays; 10 a.m.-midnight Sundays.

* All major cards.