Little bites on a grand Venetian scale

Years ago, I used to spend a lot of time in Venice -- I’m talking Venice, Italy, not Venice Beach. Most of it was in the late fall and winter when the tourists melted away and the city returned to itself. Venice is at its most mysterious then, with the canals shrouded in fog, muffling the staccato footsteps along the narrow calli. I remember the eerie sight of Piazza San Marco covered in snow in the moonlight and the sound of the horns warning that the lagoon waters were rising and it was time to put on your rubber boots.

My Venetian friends introduced me to an old custom: Whenever you run into a friend, the tradition is to duck into the nearest bar to bere un’ombra or ombretta. Literally, it means to drink a “shadow,” a small glass of wine, together. Most bars also have a selection of cicchetti (chee-KEHT-tee), the Venetian equivalent of tapas. It can be anything from a bite or two of mozzarella or other cheese to a splendid array of cubed baby octopus, marinated anchovies, cured meats and more, all spread out on the bar. Sometimes the wine is a bit rough, but the really serious wine bars offer a beautiful selection of wines from the Veneto.

I’d always hoped someone would have the good sense to open something similar here. A.O.C. is the closest thing, but that’s really Mediterranean, not Venetian. Now a Venetian wine bar has shown up not where you’d expect, in West Hollywood or Santa Monica, or even Venice Beach -- but in Santa Barbara, of all places.

At the corner of Chapala and Anapamu streets, a block off State Street, L’Ombretta is as close to the real thing as you’re likely to get in California.

The dark wood tables and long expanse of bar, all built by owner Andrea Gros, effectively capture the feeling of one of those classic old Venetian wine bars, but the light pouring in the windows is pure California. All the little details are right, from the bottles of wine lined up on the shelf like toy soldiers to the walls rubbed to a fond patina with umber and rose. That’s the work of Andrea’s wife, Susanne.

My favorite part of L’Ombretta’s look is the cafe curtains -- white shirts, undershirts and the typical navy and white striped pullovers worn by the gondoliers pinned to a line with old-fashioned wooden clothespins.

L’Ombretta follows the tradition of cicchetti, offering an inspired list of small hot and cold dishes plus an array of cheeses and cured meats. The names of the dishes are not even in Italian -- they’re in Venetian with an English translation beneath.

Unlike some Italian restaurateurs I could name, Gros, who not only designed and built the restaurant but is also the chef and wine buyer, refuses to dumb down the cuisine to the familiar list of dishes. He does, however, introduce a California influence by including more greens and salads than you’d typically encounter in Venice.

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Homeland dishes

I’d start with some cured meats from Tre-Venezie in northeast Italy. They can be ordered individually or as platters with your choice of either three or five different kinds.

There’s prosciutto di San Daniele, of course, the sweet, salty raw-cured ham from Friuli that’s even better than the one from Parma. There’s a deep-red prosciutto of wild boar too, and also a marvelous duck prosciutto, which comes from the Jewish tradition in northern Italy. He has mortadella studded with pistachios, and a special cured pork shoulder salami from Venice and a gently spiced soppressata made from ground pork. These last two I’ve never seen here before. That’s because Gros brings most of the salumi in from Italy himself. Sliced so fine you could almost read the newspaper through them, you can taste every nuance of the sweet cured pork.

At lunch, he makes delicious panini with the coppa and soppressata layered with mozzarella on a rustic roll.

Study the old black and white photos of gondoliers framed on the walls, and one dapper fellow begins to look awfully familiar. The one who appears again and again posed in front of his gondola in striped shirt and straw boater is Andrea Gros’ father.

“His name was Giuseppe, but everyone called him ‘Giorgio,’ ” says Gros. He was the gondolier in many films; that’s him with Italian actor Rossano Brazzi in 1955 during the filming of David Lean’s “Summertime” with Katharine Hepburn. Says Gros, affectionately, “My father was the biggest Casanova in Venice until he met a beautiful Venetian woman -- my mother -- and married her.”

Though Gros studied architecture at the Accademia in Venice, he ended up in the restaurant business in New York and Miami before moving to Santa Barbara.

The cicchetti concept seems made for Santa Barbara’s relaxed lifestyle.

I love the alici marinati, anchovies marinated in vinegar. These are not the same as the Spanish boquerones you see everywhere. His aren’t as vinegary, and the flesh is firm -- in fact, like much of the seafood here, it’s flown in from the Veneto, so he gets the Mediterranean anchovies fresh and marinates them himself.

Sarde en saor is a typical Venetian dish of fresh sardines marinated in white wine vinegar with pickled onions, sultana raisins and pine nuts. The dark-fleshed sardines are served whole, heads on, but neatly filleted to make them easier to eat. Heaped with golden sweet-sour onion slices punctuated with the sultanas and pine nuts, it’s a fabulous little dish.

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Prepare to share

But it’s not all seafood. You can get vegetables from the farmers market, roasted and marinated in olive oil and a little lemon or vinegar. I like the platter of grilled vegetables too, especially the crimson roasted peppers and caramelized cipollini onions. There’s also a terrific arugula salad with finely shaved raw artichokes, lemon oil and grana Padana, a hard-grating cheese similar to Parmigiano-Reggiano.

The first night I went to L’Ombretta, the six of us went a little crazy trying things. No sooner would someone notice rabbit roulade or porchetta on the menu than we’d add it to our order. The plates kept coming, slowly sometimes, between bouts of wine and requests for more bread. The rabbit was stuffed with a forcemeat and served with a mushroom sauce, one of the better rabbit dishes I’ve had in a long time. The thick slice of porchetta made from Niman Ranch pork loin was a little dry, but suffused with the taste of finely minced rosemary, sage and fennel -- and garlic. In actual fact, six is too many on a dish if you insist on sharing everything. Four would be perfect.

“In Italy, we don’t use garlic as if it were a vegetable,” says Gros, who was also waiter and probably bottle washer that night. He’s right. Northern Italian food goes very easy on the garlic.

Of course, how can you have a restaurant that purports to be Venetian and not offer the famous fegato alla veneziana -- calves’ liver with onions? He doesn’t try. Again, it’s those delicious caramelized onions that really make the dish.

Another little bite I could eat again and again is his involtini -- wild boar prosciutto wrapped around fresh mozzarella to form a little packet, then heated to crisp the ham and melt the cheese. Coarse white polenta from the Veneto with mild Gorgonzola dolce melted over the top is divine, closer to Southern-style grits than the usual yellow cornmeal polenta.

Gros makes his own sausage too, and you can get a mixed plate of excellent grilled sausages, including duck, venison and wild boar with a sweet and sour onion marmalade.

The downside is that the place is a bit disorganized at this point, even when it’s not very busy. L’Ombretta could use some professional waiters, someone to notice when the plates need clearing or the bread replenishing. Gros cannot be everywhere at once.

That said, L’Ombretta is very much what it claims to be: a wine bar, not a restaurant per se. Don’t expect the professionalism of an A.O.C. However, considering the emphasis on wine, somebody has to pay more attention to the temperature of the wines, which tend to be too warm.

The wine list features more than 250 bottlings, 99% from northeast Italy (which encompasses the Veneto, Friuli-Venezia Giulia and Trentino-Alto Adige regions). Close to 150 of them are available by the glass, or the smaller ombra.

A friend who had lived in the Veneto area turned to me one night after closely studying the wine list, telling me excitedly that it had some wines he’d only seen in Italy. Why don’t we try one? I said. So he ordered a lovely 2003 Pinot Grigio from Elena Walch in the Alto Adige, which went beautifully with the food.

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A regional tour

Everybody knows Soave and Valpolicella, but the Veneto and Trentino-Alto Adige also produce wines from the indigenous grapes Refosco and Teroldego and more, plus Sauvignon Blancs, Rieslings, Cabernets and Merlots, to mention a few.

The list has half a dozen prosecco sparkling wines and an entire page of winsome dessert wines, including a rare Maculan Acininobili and Dal Forno Romano Recioto, along with a few Trockenbeerenauslese from Austrian superstar Alois Kracher.

L’Ombretta has desserts too, namely a killer tiramisu that’s not too sweet, and a respectable handmade pear strudel.

What fun to delve into all these wines and enjoy them with a taste of Venice and the Veneto.

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L’Ombretta

Rating: ** 1/2

Location: 1134 Chapala St., Santa Barbara; (805) 965-4247, www.lombretta.com

Ambience: Cozy Venetian wine bar with a menu of cicchetti (small plates) and a huge list of wines from northeast Italy.

Service: Warm and personable, but a little disorganized.

Price: Cicchetti, $4 to $12; specials, $6 to $16; cheeses, $5 to $7; cured meats, $7 to $14; desserts, $5 to $7.

Best dishes: Marinated anchovies, sardines in vinegar, white polenta with Gorgonzola, involtini of wild boar prosciutto and mozzarella, mixed grilled sausages, rabbit roulade with mushrooms, cheeses and cured meats, tiramisu and pear strudel.

Wine list: Extensive list of wines from northeast Italy, most available by the bottle, glass or ombra (a small taste). Corkage, $25.

Best table: Along the windows.

Details: Open for lunch 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Monday through Friday; open for cicchetti 5 p.m. to midnight Monday through Thursday,

5 p.m. to 1 a.m. Friday and Saturday. (Sundays will soon be devoted to wine tastings and Italian wine classes.) Street or lot parking.

Rating is based on food, service and ambience, with price taken into account in relation to quality. ****: Outstanding on every level. ***: Excellent. **: Very good. *: Good. No star: Poor to satisfactory.