GOOD ITALIAN FOOD IN AN ODD SPOT

A block off Newport Boulevard on 18th Street there’s a little sign pointing the wrong way down a one-way street (not that Newport Beach slavishly respects its unidirectionality). It’s the only way you’d ever know there’s a restaurant called Gabbiano’s down there unless you were seriously into exploring alleys.

It’s in a light-industrial neighborhood, so this romantic little Italian restaurant with floral wallpaper and soft, sometimes downright dim, lighting has a view--from the patio section, a very clear view--of the Newport Plating works.

It had better be good, right? Actually, it is unusually good in lots of ways. The water in the glass is not tap water but Pellegrino. The garlic bread (of variable garlickiness) is always toasted deliciously dark on the unbuttered side. The wine list has a surprising number of classy Italians as well as California wines, and it’s reasonably priced.

There’s no denying an oddball quality hovering about the place, though. One night, the labels on a wine bottle were held on with Scotch tape. The waitress explained that she’d taped them back on when they accidentally came off. There are restaurants where I wouldn’t believe a story like that for a second, but I believed it here.

This is one of the places (I wish there were more) where an antipasto plate comes out automatically when you sit down so you don’t spend your first half-hour in a restaurant engulfed in food aromas but with nothing to eat. The best thing about the antipasto is the excellent, slightly crunchy calamari in cold tomato sauce. Calamari are also available as a regular appetizer, in the even more appealing form of a definitely crunchy fried version with two sauces to choose from, plain tomato and a darker, sweeter tomato sauce with oregano and a bit of meat in it.

Generally speaking, you can trust the fried appetizers. The best appetizer after the calamari is breaded artichoke hearts, which are, for once, not mushy and tasteless. Fried mozzarella comes as a thin sheet rather than the customary thick slab, and again the point is the crunchy breading and tomato sauce. (I say trust the fried stuff because the New Zealand greenlip mussels in tomato sauce that I got tasted as if they were left over from the last America’s Cup race.)

This is not one of those places where the specialty of the house is fettuccine Alfredo, though they serve a very buttery version with a couple of mushrooms in it (available in appetizer as well as entree portions). No, the specialty is a thick grilled veal chop full of delicate veal flavor, and for a buck more you can get three plump pillows of fresh crab ravioli in cream sauce along with the chop. You can also get the pillows on their own.

The next best thing after the veal chop and/or crab ravioli are pastas. One is a dismayingly rich lobster manicotti topped with cheese, and the other is a luscious pair of canelloni: one meat-filled in Gorgonzola cream topping, the other cheese-filled with the same sort of tomato-meat sauce that showed up with the calamari.

Veal rolls come in a rather oily tomato-onion stew of a sauce with artichoke hearts floating in it, but they’re kind of interesting. Their complicated filling (said to contain grapes as well as prosciutto, though I couldn’t tell) and sharp dose of black pepper and sage make them taste like an exotically textured veal sausage.

The chicken cacciatore is an oddity--it tastes as if they’d just added tomato sauce and mushrooms to chicken Marsala--but that’s OK with me. On the whole, though, the main complaint I have with Gabbiano’s is precisely its tendency to put tomato sauce with everything (scampi are a case in point). OK, one other complaint: the somewhat bitter bed of cabbage braised in red wine that underlies the chicken piedmont. The chicken itself is pretty good, though, a chicken breast topped with garlic, fennel seed and bits of chili pepper, along with some unrecognizable herb.

The desserts are on the whole better than you would expect in an Italian restaurant, particularly the chocolate cake made by mixing chocolate with crushed amaretto cookies. There’s a good plain cheesecake, only faintly sweet. The cannoli are almost a winner, with a particularly nice and fresh-tasting cheese filling mixed with chocolate bits, but the pastry has a little refrigerator aroma about it. I found a white chocolate cake rather dry and tough, though the frosting was good.

The specials are worth watching; venison scaloppine have been listed. Newport Beach might particularly note Gabbiano’s pasta box lunches, which boat parties could welcome as a change from the eternal box lunch sandwiches. Prices: appetizers $3.95-$5.95, entrees $7.95-$16.95.

GABBIANO’S 2813 Villa Way, Newport Beach

(714) 675-9355

Open for dinner Tuesday through Saturday. Beginning Jan. 7, open for lunch Monday through Friday. AE, MC, V.