RESTAURANT REVIEW : Trendy Westside Pizza Finds Home at Cafe Cafe

At Cafe Cafe, there’s butcher paper on the tables and little cups of crayons for your doodling pleasure. The cement-topped bar is adorned with plaques reading “This Spot Reserved for Michael J. Fox,” “This Spot Reserved for Mickey Rooney” and so on for apparently every celebrity in the world except Spuds McKenzie.

Cafe Cafe is in Westwood, site of the old Paul Bhalla’s Indian Restaurant, now unrecognizably full of glass and brick and tile. Technically, it’s a college town restaurant. Times being what they are, though, it is not a pizza joint where sheets of cardboard go flying when spirits are high. Al contrario, it’s an ‘80s sort of college town pizza joint; its menu includes calamari, dried tomatoes and pasta with porcini mushrooms. The sausage pizzas are made with duck sausage.

According to Cafe Cafe’s publicity, the chef is named Antonio--that’s all, just Antonio--and the specialty of the house is mushrooms Antonio. That dish doesn’t appear on the menu, but there is an excellent appetizer called funghi ripieni, a rich and mild dish of mushrooms filled with spinach and ricotta slightly sweetened (and colored pink) by tomato.

It may be the best of the appetizers, or maybe that honor should go to the lightly breaded calamari on which you squeeze a lime (nice touch) before dipping them into a cocktail sauce spiked with capers. Or come to think of it, the very best appetizer of all might be the hot rolls they bring out as soon as you sit down. They’re doused with garlicky butter, like the butter snails are traditionally served in--in fact, they even look a little like snails.

The pizzas, of which there are about 20, are of the thin-crust sort and the toppings are typical of an up-to-the-trend Westside Italian restaurant, meaning anything from simple pizza Margherita to complicated deals with eggplant, but never Canadian bacon or pineapple. The duck sausage pizzas are particularly good. Pizza Casareccia includes a bit of sliced garlic along with the duck sausage and dried tomato; the other duck sausage pizza replaces the garlic with red onion.

The entrees are likewise up to date. Conchiglie quattro formaggi are pasta shells in the sort of rich and funky cheese sauce we learned to love at Il Giardino. Both veal and chicken can be ordered in marsala sauce with a mixture of aromatic porcini mushrooms and the ordinary kind. There’s a veal dish topped with prosciutto and tomato that is surprisingly good, if on the sloppy side.

However, a number of dishes feel as if they need something. The pizza alla matta, with eggplant and dried tomatoes, needs . . . oh, I don’t know, chicken or something. Spaghetti with broccoli, chicken breast and almonds in cream sauce could use more garlic, or maybe some lemon. The mussels marinara, or at least the ones I had, could use a little more freshness. “Smells like a barn,” was one unkind comment.

Desserts are the only thing on the menu that make no particular effort to be Italian. There’s a good basic cheesecake with sour cream topping and the odd bit of fruit, a couple of sugary chocolate mousses (with or without a raspberry layer), and a big All-American oreo cheesecake. The best I’ve had is a chocolate mousse cake with a cream layer under the mousse on a plate sprinkled with chocolate bits.

Cafe Cafe, 10853 Lindbrook Drive, Westwood. (213) 824-2265. Open for lunch Mondays through Fridays, dinner nightly. Full bar. Valet parking. All major credit cards accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $20 to $55.