Classic Italian, a Menu for the Health-Minded--and Tuxes Galore

After Southern Italian food came Northern Italian. This was occasionally known as “Italian-Continental,” especially if there were very many dishes named after people.

Now, apart from rumblings that there will be (right away! any day now!) an Italian version of nouvelle cuisine, the new Italian restaurants in Los Angeles serve elegant Tuscan food.

Lately, the middle or Northern generation has decided it wants to be known as “Classic Italian,” evidently for the following reasons: (1) No radicchio or carpaccio. (2) Many cream sauces, not much olive oil. (3) No pizzas. (4) Lots of waiters in tuxes.

By this definition Vito’s, an old neighborhood place in Santa Monica, is definitely Classic.

It also has a cozy bar and two cozy, almost tiny, dining rooms lined with bookshelves (not just stocked with Reader’s Digest Editions, incidentally; somebody has kept up a subscription to an encyclopedia yearbook). There are ever so many waiters in tuxes greeting regular customers and serving food at a dignified, sometimes downright stately, pace.

The surprising thing about Vito’s is that it has not only the meat in cream and liqueur sauces, the rich pastas and the Caesar salad prepared at the table, where you can watch your money being spent, but also a health-food menu based on the severe principles of the Pritikin diet.

For Pritikinites, Vito’s is doubtless a godsend because it’s not bad, for Pritikin; at least, to judge from the fettuccine with vegetables in its tart, peppery tomato sauce.

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The Caesar salad, by the way, is rather heavy on the Worcestershire sauce and light on Parmesan and anchovies. I’d take the sweet and simple pepper salad instead, a roasted sweet pepper on a tomato on a sweet red onion, all in vinaigrette.

There’s also a broccoli salad pleasantly dosed with garlic and lemon, though the broccoli is un poco on the mushy side.

Sometimes there are specials that break out of the Classic mold. A special appetizer of penne with tomato-cheese sauce and vodka was pretty good. This was a split appetizer, the other half being agnolini with a rather beefy veal filling in an absent-minded cream sauce, and I wished the whole thing had been the penne .

But on the whole, this is Classic edging toward Continental. Consider the specialties of the house. Medaglioni al cognac, said to be one of the oldest recipes of Torino, is tender little pieces of steak in a rich sauce of mushrooms, cream, cognac, Barolo wine and garlic.

Or pollo alla Vito, which the menu boldly refers to as “A TRIUMPH!”: It’s chicken breast fried in egg batter and served with cheese and broccoli in a sauce with some cherry wine in it. In other words, it’s a sort of chicken divan a la Vito.

The nightly special dishes have been rather better, such as sand dabs in egg batter (Vito’s is big on egg batter) in a fresh lemony sauce, and a veal chop in a meaty cognac sauce without cream, mushrooms or Barolo.

The spaghetti puttanesca turned out to be unusually flavorful, rich with black cracked olives and a sweet and sour, condensed-flavored tomato sauce. It was also extremely rich with olive oil (a little unusual for this menu in that regard).

By far the best of the desserts seems to be amaretto chocolate mousse in a crumbled Oreo crust; dense, smooth, creamy, chocolatey. Once that sort of ice cream ball called tartuffo came half-melted, perhaps by design. It was OK, though, if you avoided the entity it rested on: a sugary, semi-loathsome whipped-cream-like substance that seemed to hold its texture with gelatin.

Raspberries with real whipped cream and amaretto were a treat, as always, and the chocolate bit cheesecake was as good as such things get.

The only failure among the desserts was the tirami su, a flat, soggy model suffering from a shortfall of both coffee and chocolate.

Suggested dishes: pepper salad, $7.50; fettuccine con vegetali (Pritikin), $11.95; medaglioni al cognac, $19.95; amaretto chocolate mousse, $4.95.

Vito, 2807 Ocean Park Blvd., Santa Monica. (213) 450-4999. Open for lunch Monday through Friday 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., for dinner Monday through Saturday, 5:30 to 10 weeknights, to 10:30 p.m. Saturday. Full bar. Valet parking. Major credit cards accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $45 to $75.