The bilingual signboard outside the Little Apple Healthy Food Place on West 207th Street is small but provocative. It shows two figures drawn in the faux-simple style of Keith Haring, one with a potbelly, the other flat-bellied. “Cuál quiere ser tu? Who do you want to be?” it reads. Within the potbelly are the words “Fat others.” The flat belly is labeled “Healthy Little Apple.” If the latter is your choice, then Little Apple welcomes you.

On this lively commercial strip dominated by Dominican culture, a variety of fare beckons — from the heavily breaded fried chicken in the window of John’s Fried Chicken, dribbling pools of fat into pans beneath, to the cream pastries at Lilian Bakery. Nothing of that calorie-laden sort is offered on the self-service steam table at Little Apple. When I served myself there one evening last week (everything is priced at $3.99 a pound), the selections on my oval porcelain plate included flounder in a light lemon sauce, eggplant slices slow-roasted to crispness, baked plantains, and an un-gloppy vegetable lasagna filled with fluffy, low-fat ricotta cheese flecked with chopped broccoli, carrots, and red peppers. Two evenings later, I chose baked kingfish (slightly dry), a couple of lean meatballs in an oil-free tomato sauce, and a side of yucca that had been baked until crisp on the outside, but with an interior that seemed to have been lightened with egg whites. No butter is used here, and there is only enough oil to keep foods from sticking to the pan. Healthy Little Apple indeed.

The exemplar of Little Apple’s fitness challenge to neighborhood residents is its lean, lively proprietor, España Aristy, who grew up on nearby Academy Street, and graduated from Julia Richmond High School on East 67th Street. Her Mexican mother and Dominican father ate cuisine native to their homelands. “When I was 15, I started to do modeling, and you find out that the camera puts 10 pounds on you,” Ms. Aristy said last Friday afternoon, as she kept an eye on her 1-year-old, button-eyed son, Villeret, who toddled rapidly around the premises. “As I had to keep my body, I had to learn. So I taught myself about nutrition by reading,”

She said it was difficult to find the healthful dishes she was seeking, and decided, back in 2004, to open a restaurant of her own. Friends tried to dissuade her, saying that neighborhood residents weren’t in the market for such fare. “But I said, ‘Okay, maybe not, but let’s at least give them the option,'” she said.

Three years ago, she leased a small storefront just east of Sherman Avenue. Problems with the installation of a kitchen gas line delayed Little Apple’s opening for two years. Ms. Aristy also had a hard time finding a chef willing and able to cook healthily. “I’d ask a question like, ‘Do you know how to prepare chicken francese?’ They all said yes. And what about doing it low-fat, without oil? They all claimed they could, but when I tested them, they failed. Finally, I found a chef who only said that he was willing to try.” That chef, Mauricio Reyes, got the job.

Little Apple opened to an uncertain future in October 2006. By then, Ms. Aristy had been paying rent for two years and was strapped for cash.

Ms. Aristy not only has had to get customers in the door, but also to initiate them. “I tell them that nothing here is greasy, and they say, ‘But I like greasy.’ And I say to myself, ‘Oh my God.’ They also ask why the food is so pale. I explain that they’re looking at the natural color of the food, which they’re not used to seeing.” (Adobo, a spice mixture and colorant that is a bulwark of Latino cooking, is not used at Little Apple, because it is high in salt and has chemical additives, Ms. Aristy said.)

She can be combative in defense of her way of eating. Shortly after her son was born, she asked one of her neighbors: “Don’t you feel weird that I just gave birth, but you have a bigger belly than me?”

Not that all her prospective patrons need to be prodded, though. One such diner, Nazario Brea, at the next table to me one evening, eats once a week at Little Apple. “I’m a vegetarian, which this place isn’t, but the food is low in salt and oil, and I feel confident that there are no hidden ingredients,” he said.

Still, Ms. Aristy isn’t opposed to an occasional indulgence. “You need a balance,” she said. “That’s why we offer a regular strength Ranch dressing for your salad.”

My idea of balance, after my healthy meal, was to make a pit stop across the street at Lilian Bakery, where I’d pick out a cream pastry for dessert. Seeming to read my mind, Ms. Aristy had an alternative: a cucumber and lemon smoothie. That wasn’t my idea of dessert, but before I could say no, she was slicing cucumbers (“I leave the skin on for color”) into a blender. Lemon juice, a teaspoon of sugar, and ice cubes followed. The smoothie was a pale mint green — and as refreshing as if it were a pure-fruit sorbet. I drank it to its dregs. Heading back to the subway, I passed Lilian Bakery without a second glance — and without feeling in the least bit deprived.

(Little Apple Healthy Food Place, 537 W. 207thSt. at Sherman Avenue,212-567-8555, Monday–Saturday, 11 a.m.–8:30 p.m.)