RESTAURANT REVIEW ‘LUPE’S’ : More of the Same : The 45-year-old eatery serves up old-school Southern California Mexican cooking.

I admit it. I would have taken the menu if I could have gotten away with it.

When trying to store up information about the smells, flavors and ambience of a particular restaurant, it has always seemed rude to sit there taking notes.

And since restaurant reviewing is best done anonymously, taking notes tends to arouse suspicion.

So I usually ask for a copy of the menu as I leave and, when I get outside to the car, I make notes, which is easier to do if you can refer to the menu.

But it doesn’t work that way if you’re eating at Lupe’s Restaurant.

In Thousand Oaks, Lupe’s is enough of an institution that the food is available to go, but the menus are not.

“It’s because we just don’t have any; we don’t even have enough,” bemoaned the cordial, almost sorrowful woman behind the cash register.

Judging by the crowds, which were pouring through the doors of Lupe’s during peak dining hours on the days I was there, Lupe Zuniga doesn’t need to be concerned about whether she can part with a menu.

She claims that with the exception of the Yellow Pages, she doesn’t do any advertising.

When you’ve been around for 45 years, as Lupe’s has been-- snuggled under a couple of oak trees in front of the small house in which 82 year-old Lupe still lives--I guess about all you’ve got to do is more of the same.

In this case, the same means serving up old-school Southern California Mexican restaurant cooking.

No soft tacos here or fancy-schmancy salsas such as some of the contemporary Mexican restaurants have cooked in recent years.

What we’ve got here is huge quantities of tortilla chips being dished out of garbage can-sized containers behind the counter, and a sauce much like the one you will find in a hundred similar operations.

The walls at Lupe’s are covered with velvet paintings, representing bullfighters or low-bloused senoritas; green plastic plants hang from the ceiling.

The hot--please believe me; I speak from painful experience-- platters arrive at the table looking pretty much the same.

That’s because nearly everything is covered with the traditional layer of sizzling cheese. You have to dig through it to get to what’s underneath.

“She originated fajitas 10 years ago,” said our waitress, Barbara (not to be confused with Lupe’s daughter, Barbara, who is active in the business).

The tacos on the taco dinner plate ($5.45) and the enchiladas on the enchilada dinner plate ($6.40) come with ground meat, rather than shredded, although the meat in the tamale dinner ($6.45) is shredded.

Almost everything is also covered with the traditional red sauce, which turns out to be the good news since the meat is flavorless, although there is a lot of it.

The sauce is particularly effective at disguising the meat in the restaurant’s most popular dishes: the chile verde ($6.45) and the chile colorado ($6.45).

Lupe’s is a noisy, busy, comfortable spot.

It is, as any of the waitresses will tell you, “truly a family place complete with red sauce and sizzling cheese plates.”

* WHERE AND WHEN

Lupe’s Restaurant, 1710 Thousand Oaks Blvd., Thousand Oaks, 495-3573. Open 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily except Tuesday. Reservations for six or more accepted. Beer and wine. Major credit cards accepted. Lunch or dinner for two, food only, $10 to $16.