RESTAURANT REVIEW : New Madeo Offers Sensuous Italian Food by the Seashore

How does the old Madeo in Beverly Hills differ from the new Madeo in San Pedro? Simple. The old Madeo shares a building with a major talent agency, so you eat with fast-talking, Maalox-chewing agents. The new Madeo is in a marina, so you eat with boat owners who’ve decided to sail in for dinner (slips are available).

Most of all, the new Madeo is far grander than the old. It’s a big $3-million building with seven private banquet rooms and a whole lot of plate-glass windows. The main problem is finding the place: Head east from Gaffey on 22nd Street for four blocks and turn right at the orange Cabrillo Marina sign.

The food is in the same vigorous and refined style as Madeo’s ancestry in Il Giardino and Pane Caldo would suggest. There’s a huge table of antipasti as you enter the main dining room, perhaps 15 items. This is not just cold cuts and salad we’re talking about here, but things like stuffed cuttlefish in tomato sauce, frittatas, parsleyed meatballs and baby zucchini.

You could just fill a plate from the antipasti for an appetizer course, but then you’d have to pass up the appetizers on the menu, which include a luscious version of involtini di melanzane . Usually, this is just slices of fried eggplant wrapped around cheese, but Madeo’s model is extra-plump and served hot in wonderful tomato sauce.

Naturally, there’s a wood-burning pizza oven, though the pizza section is one of the shortest on this long menu. Even if you never have one of the pizzas, they’ll bring you some focaccia bread, rather like the fresh cousin of a saltine cracker.

Many things on this menu are familiar from upscale Westside Italian places, but some are a little unusual. Aragosta e fagioli , for instance: lobster with cold, perfectly cooked white beans. (Actually, it’s a pretty frivolous thing to do with lobster, and the version with shrimp makes more sense.) There is a salty but very salmony dish of salmon on a pancake with cream-- crespelle di salmone.

Some items may seem rather austere to those for whom Italian food is simple, sensual stuff. A salad that’s just thin slices of artichoke hearts served in olive oil topped with shavings of Parmesan, for instance, is rather subtle. Spaghetti is topped with some crumbled brown stuff that at first looks like fried bread crumbs. The crumbled brown stuff, bottarga , is dried fish eggs and it tastes just like a cross between anchovies and caviar. With garlic and flakes of red pepper, it makes for an oddly satisfying dish.

But, of course, most things are simple and sensual, especially the grilled meats. The steak, fiorentina al forno , is a thick and almost impossibly beefy piece of meat. One night, there was a supernaturally good veal chop, wonderfully tender and pink inside, aromatic of fried sage.

Sooner or later they wheel out an imposing silver carving cart, though the leg of veal served from it may be a bit dry. There’s also an imposing dessert cart featuring profiteroles in chocolate sauce with raspberry filling, a staggering migliafoglie (imagine a Napoleon with no chocolate, just pastry cream, only about four times as large). And tirami su and cheesecake, of course.

The best pastry is what they call grandmother’s torte. It’s just two layers of very short crust and a soft custardy filling, mingled with melted bitter chocolate toward the middle, but the top crust is sprinkled with pine nuts and powdered sugar, and it’s remarkably satisfying.

Dining in the sleepy San Pedro of old was mostly a matter of mom-and-pop Yugoslav restaurants and the wharfside pleasures of Ports O’ Call Village. In its new booming phase, San Pedro deserves a grand and formal place like this, where there’s an ice bucket full of bottled mineral water at every table.

Madeo Ristorante, 295 Whaler’s Walk, Cabrillo Marina, San Pedro. (213) 831-1199. Open for lunch and dinner Monday through Saturday, for dinner Sunday. Full bar. Parking lot. All major credit cards accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $36 - $80.