RESTAURANT REVIEW : A Fine, Full Taste of the Mediterranean at Fino

Fino has a new fusion cuisine for us: pan-Mediterranean, mixing the Italian and Provencale styles that play so well in California with Spanish, Greek, Balkan and even Lebanese ideas. It’s a big, sunburned, backslapping cuisine full of our favorite things--eggplant, saffron, pine nuts, dried tomatoes, garlic, fresh herbs and seafood. Maybe a little more emphasis on lamb and cured meats.

Above all, olive oil and pungent imported olives. The first things you get when you sit down at Fino are a little bowl of strongly flavored purplish-black olives and another of roasted garlic cloves in a pool of jade-green oil.

The menu changes somewhat every day, but you might be able to follow that dose of olives with an antipasto of cooked and raw vegetables, roughly cut cured meats, and an army of olives. Or a plate of crostini topped with eggplant puree, garbanzo puree, a mixture of chopped tomatoes and basil (olives baked into the bread on that one) and just plain olives minced with garlic. And then perhaps half a duck in a meaty sauce flavored with thyme and olives, or a sea bass baked in a crust of crushed olives.

Whew. This is the kind of fun they’re serving up at this self-described “rustic bistro” in Torrance. Inside, the place is dominated by a mural of well-dressed people who could be Spanish, Italian or Greek having a party that looks balanced between sophistication and boisterousness.

And I suppose that’s where the food balances a lot of the time too. Sweet grilled shrimp with austere white Tuscan beans and a riotous garlicky mayonnaise colored with sun-dried tomatoes. A whole head of dignified escarole, grilled (yes, grilled) and sprinkled with Parmesan, bread crumbs and garlic, plus some fried prosciutto. Or this: a strip of mirepoix, the sweet cooked carrots and celery chastely mediating between a well-done lamb shank in intense Madeira wine reduction on one side and a sea of diced potatoes fried with garlic and rosemary on the other.

The most pan-Mediterranean thing I’ve had at Fino, I suppose, is the farfalle pasta with ground lamb, pine nuts and arugula in a tiny bit of sour cream flecked with red pepper. The most peasanty was probably rabbit braised in a winey sauce thickened with pine nuts. The most Westsidey must have been grilled tuna with toasted almonds in a saffron sauce garnished with mint.

At this point, sated with peppery calamari and deep-fried frog legs with vinegar and hazelnut sauce, I would expect Fino to rest on its laurels in the dessert department, but several of the desserts are outstanding. I’ve had an unbeatable mascarpone cheesecake with a crunchy hazelnut crust and a “tart” that was just a square of puff paste topped with thin-sliced plums, floating on fresh caramel sauce with the odd macadamia nut in it.

Mostly, though, when I think of Fino I think of those dark olives, whose haunting bitter taste reminded Lawrence Durrell of “the whole Mediterranean, the sculpture, the palms, the gold beads, the bearded heroes, the wine, the ideas, the ships, the moonlight, the winged gorgons, the bronzed men, the philosophers. . . . A taste older than meat, older than wine. A taste as old as cold water.”

I can put up with that sort of food all day. Fino is as enjoyable as I ever expect a restaurant to be.

Fino, 24530 Hawthorne Blvd., Torrance. (213) 373-1952. Open for dinner Monday through Saturday. Wine and beer. Parking in lot. Visa, MasterCard and American Express. Dinner for two, food only, $30 - $60.