Little Triumphs, Major Disappointments : Valentino’s Star Quality Runs Hot and Cold

Ordering a restaurant dinner can be as hit-or-miss as attempting to choose the winning Lotto numbers.

Monday traditionally is a chancy night to dine out because most chefs worth their toques take the day off. But many diners mistakenly regard Fridays and Saturdays as safe, simply because restaurants usually staff heavily for the weekend trade.

But a pair of dinners at Valentino’s, a fairly new Italian restaurant in Rancho Bernardo, suggest that the day of the week means relatively little when the menu alternates unpredictably between little triumphs and minor disappointments.

Just Above Mediocre

Bad fortune in ordering meant that a Friday dinner at Valentino’s closed on a bittersweet note; the meal wasn’t really bad, but, at its best, it skimmed just above the level of the mediocre. The menu was examined with a little more circumspection the next Monday, and the resultant dinner tasted as if it had been cooked in a different kitchen.

Valentino’s officially is dedicated to the great lover of the silver screen. But there seems to be little connection between the restaurant and The Sheik other than the name and a menu blurb. Frank Sinatra actually seems a larger influence because he sings more or less ceaselessly over the sound system and competes with the fountain that gurgles at the center of the main dining room.

The place occupies pleasant quarters in the rebuilt Mercado. It is comfortable and unpretentious without slipping into the overly folksy character that often predominates in San Diego’s more suburban neighborhoods. The service is attentive, somewhat formal and generally very good.

The introduction to the menu, written by proprietor Sam DeCristo, invites guests to “enjoy authentic Northern Italian cuisine.” This claim seems made primarily because the term has come to be interpreted as meaning somewhat French and usually creamy (Northern Italian cooking sometimes is both, but by no means always), and thus enjoys quite a vogue now. The menu in fact covers the peninsula from Naples to Milan, and even veers into international cooking with Greek and hot spinach salads, and with cioppino , the Italian-style seafood stew that was devised in San Francisco by fishermen of Genoese extraction.

Among the appetizers, for example, the caprese is very Southern and very nice, a simple and contented marriage of buffalo milk mozzarella (it has a softer flavor than the cow’s-milk variety produced in the United States), sliced tomato and fresh basil leaves moistened with olive oil. The brodetto de vongole , or littleneck clams steamed in white wine with butter and garlic, is pan-Italian, as is the calamari fritti, a large platter of crisply fried baby squid served with the robust house marinara sauce. Although squid remain out of bounds for many, these are tender little nuggets whose sweetness is magnified by a squeeze of sour lemon.

Four Soups Offered

The menu offers four soups, and most guests presumably taste the minestrone because it is offered as an alternative to salad in the price of the entree. The other soup choices are tortellini in broth, the classic pasta e fagiole (macaroni and white beans, at Valentino’s given an unusual fillip by the addition of mussels) and stracciatella , the Roman version of egg drop soup. The minestrone seems as good a choice as any, though, because it consists simply of rich, full-flavored broth packed with a variety of vegetables--minestrone need be no more than that.

The house salad actually is rather elegant and consists of good greens spruced up with bits of extravagant, rosy raddichio lettuce and a pretty topping of paper-thin ringlets of yellow and red bell peppers. With this salad, any dressing other than Valentino’s fine herbal vinaigrette would be a mistake.

Among the a la carte selections, the hot spinach and bacon salad seems overpriced at $7.50, although it is an undeniably tasty presentation of spinach leaves and sliced mushrooms wilted under a bath of hot, diced bacon. For effect, the bacon sizzles table-side on a trolley, which sends the aroma around the room but, more important, ensures that the dressing will be hot when it reaches both the greens and the diner.

The pasta list offers nine choices, all presented as entrees, including an elegant-sounding plate of noodles dressed with smoked salmon, cream and cognac; lasagna stuffed with white sauce instead of meat and tomato (a classic, though rarely seen in American restaurants); ravioli stuffed with spinach and ricotta and linguine with mixed shellfish. By request, the kitchen sent an order of fettuccine with Valentino’s special fresh tomato sauce, which was rather rough and disagreeable--this sauce requires really ripe, tender tomatoes, which simply are hard to come by these days.

San Diego’s Best Cannelloni?

The marinara sauce, on the other hand, had canned tomatoes as its base and consequently a velvety finish; it garnished, among other things, a very fine version of cannelloni that included minced mushrooms, ricotta and Fontina cheeses and ham in the filling, and a topping of excellent bechiamella , the Italian white sauce. Many restaurants serve cannelloni, but Valentino’s may offer the best in San Diego.

Many restaurants also offer osso buco , or veal shanks braised in an aromatic sauce. But most do a far better job than the version this restaurant offered as a special one evening. The meat had been cooked too long, had given up all its flavor and was insipid, but the sauce, oddly enough, seemed quite undercooked--the dish was sprinkled with nearly raw snippets of celery and carrot, a very serious shortcoming.

On the same evening, the kitchen sent out a dry, flavorless order of pollo Valdostano, or sauteed chicken breast topped with prosciutto. This dish, ordered from the standing menu, should have been tender and rather rich because, when done by the book, it is given succulence by its stuffing of Fontina cheese, and moisture by a pan sauce of the cooking juices stretched with butter and wine.

* VALENTINO’S

The Mercado Center, 11828 Rancho Bernardo Road, Rancho Bernardo

451-3200

Lunch served Monday through Friday; dinner nightly.

Credit cards accepted.

Dinner for two, including a glass of wine each, tax and tip, $35 to $75.