5345 Wisconsin Ave. NW (202) 364-0500 Hours of Operation and Prices Open: M-Th 11:30 am-11:30 pm, F-Sat 11:30 am-12:30 am, Sun 10 am-11 pm Entrees: $7-$20 Brunch: Sun 10-2, $7-$9.50 Other Information • All major credit cards • No Reservations • Dress: casual • Parking: Garage, 2 hours free • Nearest Metro: Friendship Heights • Handicapped accessible

Frankly, I prefer the vegetables. The menu lists more than a dozen salads, and each combines so many ingredients that it's hard to imagine them all fitting in one bowl. The Santa Fe salad, for example, has diced, marinated chicken with lettuce (nearly all the salads start with chicken and greens), tossed with black beans, corn, fontina cheese, olives, tomatoes and crisp tortilla strips with lime vinaigrette, cilantro pesto and spicy Asian peanut sauce. It's Santa Fe by way of Rome and Bangkok.

The concoction that most captures my fancy, though, is the Tuscan chicken salad - with the tomato-basil vinaigrette on the side. Like the other salads here, it looks like a medium-sized Alp in a bowl. The bottom layer is penne, buried under an avalanche of awfully good greens. Sweetly roasted chunks of eggplant, a few strips of roasted peppers and a lone Kalamata olive are threaded through the greens, grated cheese is sprinkled on top, and clinging to the side of the mound are three very thin and nicely charred slabs of boneless chicken breast. You've got to cut them up and distribute them throughout the greenery for best results, because on its own the chicken is dry and cindery. But when the chicken bits are mixed in, their charred flavor is an asset to the fluff of vegetables. Some salads may be short on substance and high on volume, but that must be so they can leave you feeling light, healthy - and ready for cheesecake.