FOOLIN’ AROUND AT RONDO

Rondo, 7966 Melrose Ave., West Hollywood, (213) 655-8158. Open for lunch and dinner, Monday-Saturday. Closed Sunday. Beer and wine only. Parking on the street. All major credit cards accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $35-$60.

“Maybe one day I will have a real restaurant,” says Graciella Checchini in her richly accented voice, “but I don’t consider Rondo a restaurant. It’s so small it’s like my dining room. To me, this is like playing.”

Part of the charm of this small new restaurant on Melrose, which seats only 42 people in rather cramped quarters, is its sheer unseriousness. It is warm and crowded and very friendly, as if everybody in the room were attending one big party. People hop from table to table, and it would not seem surprising if the person over there leaned over to ask for a taste of your pasta.

The people who work here also make it seem like it’s all in the family. They walk around juggling plates, whispering to each other sometimes in Italian, sometimes in Spanish, and wearing an air of having invited you over to dinner. Nobody’s in a hurry and although there may be (almost certainly will be) 20 or 30 people waiting for your table, the waiters act as if it would not be polite to remind you of this fact. There is a slight zaniness about this place that makes it seem like a restaurant version of “You Can’t Take It With You.”

If the restaurant seems unconventional, it certainly has nothing to do with the way that it looks. The small storefront has been beautifully designed by David Kellen and Josh Schweitzer (who are also responsible for Rockenwagner, Border Grill and City Restaurant). They have made the small space seem larger by emphasizing high ceilings and surrounding the wood-burning oven with an airy open kitchen.

This kitchen has an air of extraordinary calm, especially when contrasted with the frantic bustle of the dining room. The food emerges in a steady stream, and from the moment that a round saucer of warm flat bread comes flying to your table, glistening with oil, fragrant with rosemary, you know that you are in good hands.

“We named the restaurant for the song ‘Rondo Veneziano,’ ” Checchini explains. “My children and I all love music, and we wanted to emphasize the fact that we are serving the kind of food we ate when we lived in Venice. Venetians eat so much fish--I thought that food would be perfect here.” But then she hired a Florentine chef, Gabriele Tani, and the result is a menu that is neatly divided between rice and pasta, fish and meat.

There are, of course, pizzas. They come balanced on very crisp crusts, decorated with all manner of exotic toppings. My favorite has prosciutto, olives, artichoke hearts and cheese; it is so laden that eating it is a bit like diving into a Christmas stocking.

The restaurant may be small but the menu is long. Among the the antipasti there are the usual carpaccio , mozzarella caprese , prosciutto and melon, but there are also interesting soups, like zuppa di moscardini , an almost-stew filled with tiny squid in thick spicy red broth. This dish, with a few slices of bread, makes an entirely satisfying meal. Shrimps neatly napped with a thick orange sauce, are also deliciously unusual. There are disappointments too, primarily the insalata di mare , which arrives with a distastefully metallic tang.

There are, however, no disappointments among the pasta and risotto dishes. Risotto comes cooked in a number of ways--with shrimp, artichoke hearts, mushrooms or champagne. My favorite is the shrimp version, cooked into perfect creaminess, with a bit of a bite at the core. There is a slight pepperiness in the seasoning so that the flavor echoes the texture. Ravioli, which come filled with ricotta and spinach or stuffed with salmon and covered with a zucchini sauce, are delightful. Gnocchi are good, and even a simple dish like penne with tomatoes and basil is sauced with subtle complexity, so that you find each forkful has a slightly different flavor.

The menu is written entirely in Italian, which means that the waiters are forced to face continual explanations. As a public service, I herewith offer a bit of translation: Pescatrice is angler, or monkfish; it comes in a rather soupy tomato sauce that I found quite unappealing. Pesce spada (swordfish to you) comes simply grilled, as do bronzino (sea bass), rombo (turbot) and salmone (salmon). The chef has a deft touch with the fish, which arrive beautifully undercooked. Sogliola a la mugnaia (sole sauteed in butter) is presented at the table, then taken off to the nearest available free surface to be boned. This seems like a lot of trouble in this overcrowded space; it might make more sense to forgo the falderal and simply bone the fish before its entrance into the dining room.

The fish are well cooked and reasonably priced (around $12), but I found the meat far more satisfying. The veal dishes (there are the usual scaloppine in the usual permutations) are all excellent, the grilled lamb is fine, but the real winners are the beef dishes. Battuta , a thin slice pounded with garlic, oil and little peppers, is a good cut of meat, very tender and wonderfully seasoned. Tagliata al erbe fine , a slightly thicker cut served sliced and covered with herbs, is equally tender and tasty. There is also a grilled chicken cooked with garlic, sage and rosemary; I found it a bit dry. All of these dishes come with little cubes of oven-roasted potatoes and a heap of sauteed vegetables.

No meal here would possibly be complete without a cup of the thick dark espresso, which comes, in the Italian manner, in quantities hardly exceeding a sip. It is the perfect compliment to a slice of Rondo’s excellent apple strudel. You might be tempted to stay for a second cup, a second slice. And then a third; this is a restaurant that makes you long to linger. But although nobody will hurry you along, one glance at the line forming against the wall should remind you that there are an awful lot of people waiting for your seat.

And that is the drawback of this pleasant little restaurant. It is lovely at lunchtime, but in the evening the noise mounts as the line gets longer until there is a veritable cacophony of sound bouncing off the walls. None of the waiters make any attempt to move people out of their chairs, and the line just gets longer and longer. If your reservation is later than 7:30, you should be prepared to wait. “What can I do,” Checchini cries, “if people want to stay and drink coffee after coffee?”

It’s a good question. Anybody who knew the answer, of course, wouldn’t be just playing around--he’d have a real restaurant.