RESTAURANT REVIEW : A Better Than Average Joe’s : Tiny place in Reseda serves up a mixture of comfort food and eclectic dishes at prices that almost inspire nostalgia.

RESEDA — Eat at Joe’s . . . Joe’s Grill, that is, which is actually owned by a fellow named Joe Cook (talk about destiny).

This tiny, four-table restaurant really takes me back. During the ‘60s, I used to eat at a food co-op in Madison, Wis., known as Green Lantern. It served filling, comfort-type foods like tuna loaf, mashed potatoes and potluck salads. The tasty desserts were heavy enough to anchor small craft.

The food at Joe’s Grill is more evolved than that, although a few of Cook’s creations support the idea that too much comfort food can make you uncomfortable. And although the price side of the menu doesn’t take me quite back to the Green Lantern (where in the ‘60s you could get three squares a day for $15 a week), it’s rock-bottom by today’s standards: nothing more than $6.

You order from Joe’s mother, Trudy, a friendly woman who will tell you that the restaurant is strictly self-service . . . and then proceed to dote on you like, well, a mother, bringing you extra plates for sharing and baskets of homemade potato chips and occasionally refilling drinks. However, setting the table, pouring drinks and carrying out the mile-high plates of food is your responsibility.

The plates will be made of plastic, but the restaurant has recently added metal knives, forks and spoons. You’ll find them next to the condiment table, which is loaded with sauces--Caesar dressing, tomato-ranch dressing, an oniony homemade barbecue sauce and Cook’s own ultra-sharp vinaigrette.

Cook fries his own potato chips in a real deep-fry kettle. For a treat, come at 11 a.m., when the restaurant opens, and get a basket of fresh, hot potato chips big enough for three people to share--for just a buck. (The chips are served all day, but there’s always a fresh batch about 11.)

The chips are just about it in the appetizer department. The only other thing offered here that could serve as an appetizer is the kitchen’s most out-of-character dish, which Cook has named the cilantro walnut pesto quesadilla.

Walnut pesto quesadilla? I had queasy premonitions when I read the name on the menu, but I needn’t have feared. This stunning dish is every bit as exotic and delicious as it sounds. It’s a grilled flour tortilla smeared with a dense, savory green paste that I’d swear could have come from a farm kitchen in the Caucasian Republic of Georgia.

The menu says it comes with either chicken or barbecued tri-tip topping, but I recommend asking for the vegetarian version, which is topped with grilled eggplant. The eggplant’s texture is more in harmony with the other components.

Joe’s salads are monstrous in size, exaggerated in taste. My Blue Heaven is the name of a huge pile of romaine, radicchio, diced red onions, mushrooms, Roma tomatoes and crumbled blue cheese, tossed with plenty of extra-sharp vinaigrette. His Caesar salad comes with a creamy dressing, monster croutons and what feels like a quarter pound of grated Parmesan cheese.

Joe’s Grill generally does its hot dishes proud. One of the restaurant’s advertised specialties is turkey sloppy Joe, served open-faced over two buttery squares of corn bread. (You can optionally slop it up even further with onions and cheese.) I like the idea of substituting a low-fat meat such as turkey for the traditional ground beef, but I could wish Cook made his sauce with less sugar.

The “seared meatloaf” is a tasty, man-sized chunk, the top of the slice nicely crisped. Strangely, while the sauce on the sloppy Joe is excessively sweet, the marinara sauce that comes with the meatloaf is distinctly sour. Go figure.

The simple salmon cakes come with a lemon-dill sauce. Even simpler is garlic eggplant, made from flavorful Japanese eggplant, sliced thin, loaded with garlic and grilled nearly black. All hot dishes, by the way, come with seasonal vegetable crudites or, better yet, top-notch mashed potatoes in cream gravy.

Of course you can order your meatloaf in a sandwich; likewise the barbecued tri-tip, which is extremely tender. After barbecuing, the tri-tip is simmered in a rich red sauce, kin to the one on the sloppy Joe although a little less sweet.

One more sandwich option is Granny’s chicken salad sandwich, made from chicken breast chopped up with celery and onion, with a schmear of a biting cranberry relish.

Courage, friends, courage. Should you fancy dessert, plan on something sweet, cakey and basic. One day there was lemon crumpet cake, a baked square of flour, egg, lemon and sugar smothered with hand-whipped cream and a few ripe strawberries. Another day there was fresh gingerbread, again given the whipped cream treatment.

These desserts, which are at their best when warmed in the oven, are nearly as weighty as the sheet cakes I ate in my Green Lantern days. Today I’m all too aware of how heavy they are (they heft like paperweights). Maybe that’s why God made nostalgia.

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WHERE AND WHEN

Location: Joe’s Grill, 18109 Saticoy St., Reseda.

Suggested Dishes: Homemade kettle chips, $1; cilantro walnut pesto quesadilla, $6; turkey sloppy Joe, $5; garlic eggplant, $5.

Hours: 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday to Friday. Closed Saturday and Sunday.

Price: Lunch for two, $9 to $14. No alcohol. Parking lot. Catering. Discover, Diner’s Club, MasterCard and Visa.

Call: (818) 344-5165.