THE STRIKING THING about Starbucks’ new restaurant venture is its brilliant user-friendliness. The airy, bicameral space at McGilvra and Madison—one side the commoners’ coffee/dessert house, the other the lordly restaurant—ideally comports to the way we’ve come to use restaurants today: We drop in once or twice or three times a week, we push tables together for meetings, we grab it to go, we bring a book and sit by the fire, we bring the kids. You can do all that at the casual Cafe Starbucks, with a full steak dinner or just some joe and a pastry, and in that sense it’s very much the cafe version of the coffeehouse—democratic in its welcome, omnifarious in its functionality.

Best of all—as my companion dubiously noted at the end of our second dinner—snagging a table at Cafe Starbucks is rarely a problem thanks to food that’s so dependably mediocre.

Cafe Starbucks 4000 E Madison, 329-3736 Sun-Thu 5:30am-10pm, Fri-Sat 5:30am-11pm AE, DC, MC, V beer, wine, and alcoholic coffee drinks

OK, that’s not entirely true. I had one really terrific seasonal mixed greens salad ($3.25/$4.25), with fresh exotic greens nicely dressed in a bright balsamic vinaigrette and sprinkled with Gorgonzola. Later, I had a good sandwich: the hot chicken club ($6.25), in which a moist, pounded breast is served on an onion roll with pancetta, red onion, a perky sun-dried tomato pesto, and melting provolone. I also had one good dessert: a slice of dense lemon cheesecake ($4.50) on a grand biscotti-crumb crust, made in-house. And I had one vanilla milk shake that I still consider an act of God; made of nonfat milk and nonfat ice cream, it somehow remained creamy and decadent. (There’s a full-fledged soda fountain right next to the espresso bar, to showcase Starbucks’ line of coffee ice creams in sundaes and milk shakes and coffee drinks, some with liqueurs and some in low-fat or nonfat versions. Like I said: the way we eat today.)

But after three meals at Cafe Starbucks, I came away with the distinct impression that whatever good came out of the kitchen got that way by accident. While I was enjoying my seasonal greens, my friend sat before a perfect mess of a spinach salad ($3.95/ $4.95), in which tender spinach greens held court on a plate with pine nuts, crumbled egg, tomatoes, mushrooms, and a long plank of pancetta. Through some profound failing of flavor in the dressing, the assemblage never cohered into a salad.

His portobello-mushroom-spinach lasagne ($7.95) was the same way: a whole considerably less than the sum of its parts. The flavors were fine and fresh—they just did nothing for one another. I ordered the broiled boneless chicken ($8.95) and found that Starbucks roasts its meats the way it roasts its coffee beans—on the far side of long. With most of the moisture cooked out of it, the chicken relied heavily on its side dish—sweet, garlicky mashed red potatoes—for palatability. The potatoes were so good that it almost worked.

Almost.

On our second visit we began with two different salads: chopped vegetable ($3.25/ $4.25), and Asian chicken ($4.25/$5.45), and found them both as unintegrated as the spinach salad had been, their parts showing no affinity for one another and their dressings uneven. The evening’s special, pork tenderloin, had been mishandled—overcrusted with pepper and too long on the grill—but at least it offered those good garlic mashed potatoes and basil-kissed tomatoes as accompaniments.

OFF THE MINI-PIZZA list came one called the Siren ($6.95), with gold potatoes, caramelized onions, garlic, pancetta, rosemary, and fontina cheese. A perfect size for one, it arrived on a delicious soft crust powerfully flavored with rosemary. Alas, atop the crust was a different story: The potatoes were mushy and too thickly cut, with rosemary packing way too heavy a punch. This putative siren turned out to be an ill-conceived starchfest. I should have known when it arrived that something this unrelentingly beige couldn’t possibly taste good.

God knows we gave the place a chance. Back I schlepped at lunchtime for visit no. 3 and a trio of sandwiches, of which the hot chicken club was the sole winner. The herb-crusted turkey breast ($5.95) could not have been less interesting; something you don’t expect when the menu details such exotics as “organic rosemary sea salt bread” and “hickory-mustard mayonnaise.” Worse was the Black Forest ham sandwich ($5.25), with havarti cheese and sweet honey mustard on stiff Italian stirato bread. I don’t know what stirato means, but I’m guessing it’s Italian for “Chew your way out of this one, sucker.”

Perhaps I expect too much. This is a place, after all, where when asked who the chef is, the nice overcaffeinated boy behind the register looks confused, then tells you the name of the kitchen manager. (“Overcaffeinated” doesn’t tell the half of it—the employees at Cafe Starbucks fairly carom off the walls with enthusiasm, a quality that in some cases translates into terrific service and in others just looks like addiction.)

Cafe Starbucks is a growing concern, with branches at Pacific Place and at California and Fauntleroy in West Seattle, in addition to the Madison Park outpost, and big dreams for Alki and Belltown. And it’s cheap—which ought to mitigate some of the criticism. At $6.95, dinner doesn’t have to be that good.

But neither, alas, should it be this bad.