Where rancho cooking still reigns

“Everybody fills up on the soup,” says the waitress at Centro Basco, with a hint of distress. “I have to remind them there’s a lot of food coming.”

If you’ve ever eaten in a Basque restaurant, you already know there’s a lot of food coming. After the basket of sourdough and the bottomless tureen of soup come the mixing bowl of salad, the pasta, the meat, the potatoes and the vegetables -- always at absurdly low prices.

A lot of people love this plain farm-style cooking with its occasional French- or Spanish-like touches, but they may not know you can get Basque food without driving clear up to Bakersfield. Centro Basco has been around since 1940, when it opened to serve the Basque shepherds and dairymen who were a significant slice of Chino’s population before the post-’70s tidal wave of suburbanization.

Alongside the restaurant there’s a row of apartments that shepherds used to rent. Out back there’s a Basque handball court. And at lunch and weekend dinner, you still have the option of dining in the traditional family style -- you sit at a long table with strangers and eat a massive meal that includes two meat entrees and wine. (You don’t have to make a reservation for a family-style meal, but you do have to be on time. They literally ring a dinner bell at noon or 7 p.m. sharp.)

It’s a huge place. The front of the building is a bar; the entrance to the dining rooms is off the parking lot. On your right as you enter is the room of family-style tables, and in front of you is a conventional restaurant dining room of tables seating four. Behind it there are banquet rooms.

As for that soup you’re in danger of filling up on, it might be a fascinating potato-carrot soup that tastes almost as if there’s cheese in it, or a sort of minestrone without pasta, or a “Manhattan clam chowder” that’s really an old-fashioned vegetable soup with a couple of clams. The best I’ve had was a beefy onion soup. Instead of the familiar raft of toast covered with melted cheese, it comes with a little pot of Parmesan and a bowl of toasted croutons.

If you order the regular, non-family-style dinner, you start with two salads, iceberg lettuce in a mouth-filling vinaigrette and a plate of sliced tomatoes and tongue. Then comes spaghetti in a canned tomato sauce, substantially enriched with meat, served under a snowbank of Parmesan.

Most entrees are plain roasted or baked meat, always tender, sometimes on the bland side, for example the prime rib and (surprisingly, given the restaurant’s sheepherding traditions) the leg of lamb. The roast chicken has a good browned skin, and if you order it as poulet Basquaise, it’s slathered with a richly flavored, slightly sweet tomato and bell pepper sauce.

Steaks come with bottled steak sauce, but you can ask for a more memorable topping: a little dish of chopped garlic. On weekdays there are specials such as veal pot roast -- plain roasted veal with a hint of carrot flavor. Along with your entree you get well-browned French fries and one rather overcooked vegetable, usually green beans or (probably canned) peas.

Some people are understandably not up to a whole meal, so Tuesday through Thursday you can get a “setup” -- everything but the meat -- for $9.95.

Lunch is basically a reduced version of dinner, without the pasta or the tongue salad, and there’s a smaller range of choices (only one steak, a thinnish Spencer that’s particularly good with the garlic). You also can get something lighter than a full meal, such as a steak sandwich. One of the best lunches is Basque sausage (lukinka, spelled lukainka in other Basque dialects): two dense, chewy pork sausages, spiked with garlic and red pepper, served on twisty egg noodles with butter and garlic.

Dessert is a la carte, and there are only a few choices. The flan is a truncated cone of moderately soft custard that comes with whipped cream and a faintly medicinal-tasting caramel sauce. You can get cheesecake, either plain or dribbled with raspberry sauce. The best dessert, though it might not be quite what you feel like after a big meal, is a fudge-like chocolate cake with chocolate bits in the frosting.

Family-style dinners come with wine, but it won’t be a problem if you’re eating in the regular dining room and have to pay extra. The choices, French and Californian, are decent and around $20 a bottle. They’re also available by the glass. Like everything else, they’re a bargain.

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Centro Basco

Location: 13432 Central Ave., Chino, (909) 628-9014.

Price: Lunch, $7.95-$9.95; family-style lunch, $12 (children $6); sandwiches, $3.95-$6.95. Dinner, $11.95-$19.95; family-style dinner, $15 (children $7). Desserts, $2.50-$3.50.

Best dishes: Onion soup, poulet Basquaise, Spencer steak with garlic, lukinka sausage with noodles.

Details: : Lunch, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesday through Friday; dinner, 5 to 9:30 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, 4 to 9 p.m. Sunday. Family-style lunch, noon Tuesday through Friday, 12:30 p.m. Sunday; family-style dinner, 7:30 p.m. Friday through Sunday. Full bar. Parking lot. All major cards.