RESTAURANTS / Max Jacobson : Dana Point Pasta House Draws Lively Crowd but Takes Few Chances

Ferrantelli is an engaging dockside pasta house doing a brisk trade in its Dana Point Harbor location. It is not a restaurant that takes a lot of chances. Weekdays bring local businessmen and young professionals, a well-dressed bunch radiating success and confidence. Weekends, the house fills up with the beach crowd, people who come from all around to breathe the area’s best air and soak up the pristine rays. Expect a lively crowd almost anytime.

From outside, the restaurant looks like a giant yellow gazebo, with a surreal little mini-turret jutting out from the top. Inside, the dining room resembles an elegant San Francisco saloon, with lots of beveled glass; dark, clubby wood veneers; a mirrored bar, and even a map of Italy in the bathroom. White table linen and tuxedoed waiters add an unexpected touch of formality. This, after all, is yacht country.

You can see what kind of an effort the restaurant is making just by sampling the antipasto for two. You’ll get one of the most appetizing-looking dishes I’ve ever seen in an Italian restaurant, a beautiful palette of edible colors. And, excepting some very red, but otherwise ordinary, sliced tomatoes, everything on it tastes terrific.

Prosciutto and sorpressata, two Italian cold cuts the kitchen brings in from San Francisco, crown the dish, flanked by cold marinated eggplant, roasted yellow peppers, bufala mozzarella with basil, artichoke hearts and an assortment of spiced olives. The eggplant is particularly delicious when eaten with the house garlic bread.

Other appetizers are almost as good. The deep-fried calamari, served in little ringlets from a cloth basket, is about as good as the dish gets. Mozzarella marinara, in a thick breading, is saved by an excellent marinara sauce. And a very good, expertly sliced carpaccio is served with lots of capers and Parmesan cheese.

Insalate Ferrantelli-- mixed greens with red onions and plenty of wonderful, crumbled Gorgonzola--comes in a delightfully tart vinaigrette. Insalate spinaci, on the other hand--a combination of leaf spinach,mushrooms, walnuts and minced prosciutto--came in a sugary dressing that I just couldn’t eat.

Pasta is the heart of any Italian menu. The best pasta here is the ravioli, which is made on the premises. The al dente little pies are served alla marinara; they slide off the fork, spilling a soft ricotta filling. All the other pastas come fresh daily from Pasta Mia, a local noodle shop. Linguini alla caprese, a simple dish with virgin olive oil, chopped tomatoes, mozzarella and fresh basil, has a taste as clean as the air in Dana Point Harbor. The kitchen’s pesto is on the dense, dry side, with a great deal of Parmesan cheese that threatens to overwhelm the basil; it was good, even if the ziti ordered with it showed up as fusilli. Another good sauce is called acciuga rossa, a salty preparation with crushed anchovies, pear tomatoes, black olives, garlic and fresh basil. Have it with a thin pasta like spaghettini or linguine, and substitute it for a meat course.

For that matter, substitute freely for meat courses. Pieces of chicken on the grigliata alla Antonio, the restaurant’s version of mixed grill, are nice, flavored by the lemon wedges surrounding it on the plate. And so are the char-broiled scampi alongside it. Scampi alla Maria are good too; char-broiled in lime butter with olive oil and garlic, they have a smoky bite. But the veal on the mixed grill could have been anything.

In fact all the veal dishes are so sweet and tasteless that it is hard to tell you’re eating veal. The lombatta Pavarotti, veal chops in a sherry and mint marinade, were so sweet I sent them back. Without a word the kitchen exchanged the dish for saltimbocca alla Romana, (veal with prosciutto, fontina cheese and a sherry wine sauce). But once again, all I could taste was sugar.

Dolci (desserts) are supposed to be sweet, and Ferrantelli has a fine selection. The restaurant serves, among other things, a bland lemon ice, a dependable tiramisu (espresso-soaked lady fingers with a creamy mascarpone cheese topping) and a reasonably satisfying cassata Siciliana (amaretto-drenched sponge cake layered with a firm-textured custard and bittersweet chocolate).

Ferrantelli is moderately expensive. Antipasti are $3.50 to $9.95. Pasta dishes are $10.50 to $15.95. Main dishes are $13.50 to $22.50. The wine list is small, and mark-ups are healthy.

FERRANTELLI

25001 Dana Point Harbor Drive, Dana Point

(714) 493-1401

Open for lunch Monday through Friday, 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.; for dinner Sunday through Thursday, 5:30 to 10 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 5:30 to 11 p.m.

Visa, MasterCard, American Express accepted