DUE MILLE: HOMING IN ON GOOD ITALIAN COOKING

If people are indeed eating in restaurants at exponentially increasing rates, will the term home cooking become a phrase of the past? Will anyone be home for dinner by the turn of the century? Can a restaurant nurture as well as beguile? We batted these points around at Due Mille in Sherman Oaks a couple of weeks ago.

Due Mille looks more chic than homey, yet someone’s taken a householder’s care in the design and execution of the place. There are high ceilings with light wood beams, white rough-textured walls, terra-cotta tiles and mauve leather banquettes. There are live palm trees, new-wave triangular skylights and a still life of round stones lit from below.

At lunch the sun comes pouring in, and at dinner time the lighting is refined. Due Mille mixes the Mediterranean world with Los Angeles. Maybe this is what spaghetti Western means: a wall of louvered doors opening onto noisy Ventura Boulevard. We can’t imagine wanting to sit at the tables outside with all the traffic going by.

Happily ensconced on a banquette inside, we began lunch one day with a fine Caesar salad and an equally good and equally garlicky seafood salad of scallops, squid and two sizes of shrimp. A veal cannelloni was so tender it seemed to have what artist Eva Hesse once referred to as “the mark of the hand.” That’s where the home-cooking notion came in. This is an elusive trait but, at its best, Due Mille has all the finesse of the kind of food your mother cooks, if she happens to be a good cook.

A special mostaccioli with a light cream and tomato sauce shot with vodka had it. So did a delicate appetizer of roasted marinated eggplant stuffed with fontina cheese. The insalata caprese , with its plump red peppers and fragrant basil leaves, was quite good. Three of us enjoyed mopping up the well-modulated vinaigrette, particularly now that olive oil has been declared healthful in the war against cholesterol. Even the simple vegetables (green beans, onions, zucchini, red peppers) and potatoes served with entrees were prepared with thought.

Still, numerous entrees were undistinguished. Broiled veal medallions were ordinary, though generous. Baby salmon sauteed in a brandy and mustard sauce was completely without character, although fresh. A routinely brothed cioppino was filled with rubbery mussels, clams, fish and shrimp that tasted of iodine.

Meals are leisurely. At least in part this is because the waiters, while clearly professional, have a tendency to disappear. On one slow evening the waiter kindly brought us a wonderful appetizer of plump squid in tomato sauce (which was not on the menu), then vanished mid-meal, never to be seen again.

That squid was served in a soup bowl, a decidedly homey touch. A large, sweet--and soupy--flan also came to the table that way. On the other hand, a grand tirami-su was paraded in singular restaurant style, with pride, as one might display a Thanksgiving turkey at home. That popular dessert was well made, but not particularly exceptional.

There is a decent list of Italian, French and California wines.

Due Mille, 15005 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks, (818) 905-8402. Monday-Friday, 11:30 a.m.-3 p.m., 5:30 p.m.-11 p.m.; Saturday, 5:30 p.m.-11 p.m. Closed Sunday. Valet parking. All major credit cards. Dinner for two (food only): $35-$65.