RESTAURANT REVIEW : Long Beach’s Pasta al Dente Puts a Little Pizazz Into Pizzas

There’s a little trattoria in Naples--the Naples in Long Beach, that is--called Pasta al Dente that makes remarkably quaint desserts. As you enter the door, you might find a chocolate-kiwi pizza staring you in the face, like a motif of what’s to come.

Pasta al Dente looks sort of like a Westside place: two big white rooms with lots of mirrors and a turquoise accent here and there, and the sound track runs to Mozart, Smetana and Tchaikovsky.

Chef Kimberlie Carroll has actually worked on the Westside, e.g. at La Toque, and what she has done to the menu at this neighborhood pizza/pasta joint can be quite interesting. For instance, although not all the pizzas are remarkable, the Al Dente Pizza definitely is. Perched on a medium-thin crust, its topping of feta cheese, black olives and both dried and fresh tomatoes has a light texture and an enjoyably sharp flavor.

There are some unusual pastas among the largely familiar lineup. A couple have curried sauces, and angel hair bocca caldo , the name supposedly meaning “hot mouth,” is mixed with garlic, pickled medium-hot Italian peppers, sun-dried tomatoes and slightly peppery oil, not a huge portion but about right for a cold evening. Pasta Dijon is green fettuccine with chicken and a pleasantly novel Dijon mustard sauce.

On the other hand, while the lasagna is quite sensible, filled with ricotta and served in a slightly peppery tomato sauce, the lasagne di mare merely adds shrimp, crab and scallops. Somehow it seems better plain. And Pasta al Dente’s risotto is really a paella, the rice cooked dry with tomato sauce as in Spanish rice and mixed with shrimp, chicken and peas.

There is a short list of non-pizza, non-pasta entrees, mostly involving chicken. The one the menu urges you to try is pollo voila , which is even more cross-cultural in effect than the Franco-Italian name suggests. The cream sauce has a Southeast Asian effect, tasting faintly of coconut as well as tarragon.

The best of the appetizers is scallops sauteed in garlicky cream sauce. The only soup of the day I’ve tried was sweet potato, and it was extremely odd: a thin, slightly sweet, very fine-grained puree of sweet potato, pale ocher in color and scented with cinnamon and clove. It could be a sauce for a dessert, but it’s very strange way to begin a meal. The only thorough failure I’ve had here, though, was some damp and doughy focaccia bread.

Now to the remarkably quaint desserts. The filling of the lemon cheesecake is dyed a virulent yellow and has a sweet frosting, just like a layer cake. The thick and not excessively sweet raspberry puree it floats on, though, is tasteful by any standard, unusually full of raspberry flavor. There are decorative squiggles drawn on the sauce in creme anglaise , Westside fashion.

This does not prepare you for what goes on with some of the other desserts. A luscious cheesecake full of chocolate bits comes with sauce and squiggles, but not tasteful raspberry sauce with gracefully wavy lines of creme anglaise ; no, it’s a checkerboard pattern of chocolate sauce and cherry-flavored creme anglaise with mysterious puffs of green stuff--mint, I think--here and there, like a chocoholic’s drawing of a Christmas tree. The same sort of colorful gridwork shows up on a pair of heart-shaped chocolate brownies known as Chocolate Decadence.

But as for the chocolate pizza, I really can’t say. It just sits at the door, all alone, remote from any serving spatula. Maybe it is just a motif.

Pasta al Dente, 5856 Naples Plaza, Long Beach; (213) 433-1616. Open for dinner daily, brunch Sunday. Beer and wine. Street parking. MasterCard and Visa accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $30-$54.