Schmoozing Over Cheese and Pasta’s Bounty

There I was, sampling a pretty snappy pasta pomodoro at Cheese and Pasta in Santa Monica when all of a sudden I felt as if I were standing in a shop in Antwerp, circa 1943. Owner Jim Deely, a former cook in the diplomatic corps, was telling a customer about his precious deliveries from the La Brea Bakery. “The breads are very tough to get,” he was saying. “You have to have a relationship, if you know what I mean.” I almost looked in my billfold for a fougasse ration card.

But even if you arrive too late to claim one of those elusive loaves, which are available Wednesday through Saturday, there’s no real sense of scarcity here. Bounty abounds in the big case of cheeses, the fridge filled with fresh pastas and the great bowls and platters of cooked food. And there’s no problem with shipments--everything but the bread is prepared on the premises.

Even without bread on which to spread it, Cheese and Pasta’s dense, rich, smooth chicken liver pate laced with sour cream is worth seeking out. And minus sandwich possibilities, the dill cucumber salad is still delicious.

Cheese and Pasta serves many of the ‘80s standards one finds in--how else to say it?--yuppie take-out shops. The rather dull-looking curried chicken salad is not as gorgeous as what you find in other shops but actually turns out to taste lush and wonderful. Jamaican chicken, moist breasts rubbed with a paste of ginger, garlic and pepper, is also excellent.

But while the lemon linguine seafood pasta looks inviting--strewn as it is with cherry tomatoes, tricolored peppers, and clam shells lining the bowl--it tastes oily and is filled with those itsy-bitsy shrimp that are better off left in the sea.

Taking home some of Cheese and Pasta’s fresh black squid-ink linguine to see if it had a flavor of the deep, I found it contained a definite, if subtle, squid taste--the gustatory equivalent of putting a seashell to the ear.

On the terrestrial front, Cheese and Pasta offers 17 different three-course picnics to go. They range in price, per person, from $8.95 for a slice of tomato basil quiche, salad and dessert to poached salmon, potato salad, green beans with pesto and dessert at $16.95. Still, I’d rather go the a la carte route.

Picnic portions are small and, at least in the meals I tasted, not nearly as good as food I chose in the shop. The consistency of the custard in the tomato basil quiche, for instance, tasted like a weak moussaka, and the crust was like leather left out in the rain. The crunchy green beans were covered with a mere thimbleful of pesto.

And once, when I ordered the calamari salad supper, someone substituted an extra apricot chicken by mistake. The chicken, by the way, arrived with a pallid apricot sauce, not “spicy” as the menu had described. And the accompanying Indonesian rice was not to be found; an ordinary broccoli salad was tucked in instead. For dessert, fudge brownies were moist and satisfying, the creme caramel grainy.

You’re welcome to taste before you buy--and affable owner Deely likes to schmooze about food. “You know why I dreamed up the Babcock peaches stuffed with mascarpone? “ he asked. “Someone needed finger food for a funeral.”

While I wouldn’t say everything’s to die for, I would consider getting on a ration line for that curried chicken salad or that chicken liver pate. With or without the La Brea Bakery bread.

Cheese and Pasta, 1415 Montana Ave., Santa Monica. (213) 451-1753 or (213) 394-2131. Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m.- 7 p.m. ; Sunday, 10 a.m.-5:30 p. m. Visa and Mastercard. Picnics must be ordered 24 hours in advance. Picnic menu available. Street parking and parking lot.