RESTAURANT REVIEW : Cowboy Kinda Cooking : Country Star relies on Nashville names and down-home portions of barbecue to draw crowds at CityWalk.

UNIVERSAL CITY — The newest concept restaurant on the block is Country Star, a sort of C & W equivalent of Hard Rock Cafe, located at CityWalk. I’ve been told there are plans to open Country Stars in other tourist meccas such as Orlando, Fla., and Branson, Mo. Time will tell.

The restaurant is co-owned by a group of real country stars that includes Reba McEntire, Clint Black, Vince Gill and Wynonna. Come prepared to get an earful of these artists as you dine, and to see their memorabilia--motorcycles, guitars, platinum records and shiny studded jackets--on display all around you in glass cases and picture frames. If you aren’t on sensory overload, look to dozens of TV screens projecting videos of hot country singers. Don’t act surprised if the faces you see belong to Clint, Vince, Reba or Wynonna.

This is CityWalk’s big attraction restaurant at the moment. I brought a foreign visitor for dinner and the experience just about overwhelmed her. It wasn’t the various collages of Nashville, the trompe l’oeil ceiling of a desert sunset or even the huge columns fashioned out of stainless steel in the shape of cowboy boots that did her in. Actually, it was the sheer size of her dinner, the Country Star BBQ Feast--a meal for two, which combines wood-smoked chicken and several different kinds of ribs for $15.95 a person. This platter is so enormous that three of us barely made a dent.

Country Star takes its ‘cue, and other Southern foods, quite seriously. Head chef Lane Wootten is known as the Cowboy Chef, and I’ve been eating his ribs and chili around town for years. (He developed a large following when he cooked at RJ’s, The Rib Joint in Beverly Hills.) You can’t miss Wootten--he’s the huge man wearing spurs and sporting a long, gray, power ponytail.

Though they rarely seem original, many of Wootten’s recipes are real crowd-pleasers. Meats are slow-smoked with real hickory here, and the quality of the ingredients, especially in the case of the beef ribs, baby back ribs and chopped pork, is high.

Foods also tend toward sweetness, perhaps because the kitchen is aiming at a young crowd. The corn bread is more like cake, made from a muffin-type batter with a glazed topping. The barbecued chicken, though classically smoky and tender, has a downright sugary red crust.

The world’s greatest cheese toast (that’s its somewhat immodest name) is crunchy sliced sourdough with a crisp, delicious cheese topping baked on.

Wootten’s chili recipe has won numerous awards at cook-offs around the Southland, and it truly deserves the attention. It’s a meaty chili (my best guess is that the meat is lean ground sirloin), slowly simmered in a complex, spicy red sauce. Go ahead and add a little chopped onion, but leave out the bland shredded Cheddar.

Vince Gill’s cheeseburger is a monster, weighing more than a third of a pound. Like all of the restaurant’s sandwiches, it is served with Country Star fries, corn slaw (a Wootten favorite) and a crisp wedge of half-sour pickle. I like the slaw precisely because the only sweetness comes from fresh corn and natural sugars of the cabbage. The fries, though, aren’t for everyone. The long, bubbly potato strings are doused liberally in seasoned salt.

If I go back any time soon, I’m having another Old Hickory Lake pig sandwich, for my money the best thing on the entire menu. The sandwich is what they call “pulled pork” in the South: crackling shreds of hickory-smoked pork stuffed into a hamburger bun, sauce on the side. Wootten is proud of his barbecue sauces (the red one is for pork, the yellow for beef), but this sandwich is so flavorful that it doesn’t need help.

As for the rest of the fare, it’s about what you’d expect: salads with too much dressing, pizzas with too much topping, desserts that are just plain too much. The best of the sweets is definitely the top notch banana split, which features three ice creams, lots of fruits, fudge sauce and hand whipped cream.

The service, for the record, is snappy and highly professional, the way it should be in a high-volume operation.

* Max Jacobson reviews restaurants every Friday in Valley Life!

WHERE AND WHEN

What: Country Star.

Location: 1000 Universal Center Drive, Universal City.

Hours: 11:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. Monday to Saturday, 10:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. Sunday.

Suggested dishes: world’s greatest cheese toast, $2.25; award-winning chili, $4.95; Old Hickory Lake pig sandwich, $7.95; rib combination, $14.95.

Price: Dinner for two, $23-$45. Full bar. Two-hour parking validation ($2) at CityWalk valet. All major cards.

Call: (818) 762-3939.