Fresh Choice Offers Healthy Mega-Buffet

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Fresh Choice, 10733 Northup Way, Kirkland; 822-2548. Sunday-Thursday, 11 a.m.-9 p.m., Friday-Saturday, until 10 p.m. Major credit cards accepted, but no checks. Entirely no-smoking. Wheelchair accessible. Beer, wine. No takeout. ------------------------------------------------------------------

Fresh Choice wants you to eat better.

Although it features fresh fruit and vegetables, low- and non-fat tossed specialty salads, soups and muffins, the all-you-can-eat buffeteria also offers a pasta bar with creamy sauces, a potato bar with all the fixings and plenty of desserts.

But you'll also find colorful pamphlets with nutritional analyses of the food - complete with calorie, fat, sodium and cholesterol counts - as well as health tips for selecting food and dieting. The restaurant even publishes the name and phone numbers of the nutritionist who prepared the information. Fresh Choice thus simultaneously encourages customers to eat everything in sight, and to avoid half its menu.

Nonetheless, eating healthily at Fresh Choice - even at the pasta and potato bars - is easy to do. Red food labels indicate low-fat (three grams or less from fat) dishes; purple labels indicate fat-free entrees. Avoid piling on the cheese, sour cream, butter and bacon at the potato bar, and the cheese and sauces at the pasta bar, and you'll do fine. Most of the desserts, and many of the salad dressings, are low-fat, too.

Everything is made from scratch daily, with fresh ingredients. You won't find any preservatives or additives. Lunches are only $5.99 and dinners are $6.99. Kids 12 and under eat for half off, 5 and under for free; older citizens (55 and up) get a 10 percent discount. Frequent-diner cards, available at the register, get you a free meal after 10 paid visits.

The restaurant is scrupulously clean and bright, with a terrific service ethic. At busy times, managers will find you a table and carry your food there, and servers offer to take your empty glass and bring you a refill. The colorful dining room, profuse with plants, has comfortable booths and tables filled with families, couples and business people.

Indecisive people will face monumental struggles at Fresh Choice, which lists hundreds of foods (most of them vegetarian) on its rotating menu and offers dozens of entrees daily. Some of the international, non-fat salads are bland preparations, but just chalk them up to experience and try something from the impressively large salad bar. With every visit you'll discover something new to like, as well as familiar favorites.

Be sure to pace yourself the first time through the line. You can't possibly fit everything you want to try on one plate, so just take small portions and return with a fresh plate for something else that looks good.

At the pasta bar, tell the server which of the three dry pastas you want (radiatore and linguine are usually the best) and it will be flash-cooked in boiling water in seconds. Then ladle on your sauce (again, a choice of three) try the wonderful tomato cream, basil-pesto cream or carbonara. Add a touch of fresh garlic and you're ready.

The soup bar offers five choices, perhaps a Bavarian lentil, turkey gumbo a (very good) potato cheddar or tomato rice. Minestrone and chowders show up often, too. Some are thick, others thin, but all are piping hot with lots of ingredients.

Five types of low-fat muffins (such as blueberry, lemon-poppy seed, orange, banana, carrot-oat and corn) are served daily, along with pizza bread, delicious, soft bread sticks coated with olive oil, and non-fat sourdough or bran bread.

Desserts include apple crisps, chocolate or bread pudding, Jello, tapioca, pumpkin mousse, soft chocolate or vanilla yogurt cones, triple decadence brownies and fresh fruit (melons, apples and oranges).