RESTAURANT REVIEW : Clone Breaks Mold, Develops a Personality

Gather around and listen, for there’s good news this morning. Are you ready? “Clonehood” is curable.

About two years ago, a restaurant called Sostanza opened on Wilshire with a menu that resembled Prego’s . . . a lot. It resembled it right down to the typography.

Granted, the restaurant has never looked like Prego. A garish mural of a Medieval Italian horse race covers one wall right up the unusually high ceiling. That mural is cloned from one in a New York restaurant called Palio. But, not long ago the kitchen got a new boss, a former sous-chef at Chianti Cucina and Locanda Veneta, and the menu he’s put together is distinctly new.

His style is a little hard to pinpoint. For instance, he makes mussels and clams in white wine sauce flavored with garlic and saffron ( frutti di mare en guazzetto ), nothing unusual except that this huge bowlful is an appetizer. He uses imported prosciutto, pale pink and wonderfully delicate in flavor, but it’s for an appetizer of prosciutto with dates instead of melons, not at all a bad idea.

My somewhat reluctant vote for the best appetizer is the polpettine misteriose : turkey meatballs in a purplish-brown sauce of wine, meat juices and sweet onion marmalade. It is not so much misterioso as capricious, but grows on you.

There’s a short list of pizzas. They have crisp, thin crusts and standard Westside toppings, the most exotic being rosemary and moderately thin slices of potato on the cheese and tomato sauce base. The pasta list is long by comparison, and the menu is organized to suggest that you have pasta as a second course, between the appetizers and the meat course.

Having a meat course afterward is probably wise unless you distinctly plan to eat light, because the pasta portions are semi-dainty. For instance, the lobster-filled ravioli allo zafferano is in a particularly luscious saffron cream sauce. Then there’s the somewhat riskier choice of tortelloni agli asparagi , in which the pasta is filled with ricotta but served in a sauce of pureed asparagus and probably a little olive oil. It’s more subtle than saffron and cream, and it’s lighter and fresher.

The steak is in the finest tradition of huge Italian steaks and probably the best thing on the menu. It’s an aged Porterhouse covered with red wine sauce flavored with rosemary and black olives (California ripe ones, not any of the more powerful Italian kinds). Actually, it’s half-covered. The delicate filet portion is thoughtfully left nude.

The next best thing is costolette svitate , a baby rack of lamb in peanut sauce. This is not one of the flamboyant Southeast Asian peanut sauces, though, but a classicizing and distinctly European one, mostly wine and meat juices with just a hint of peanut flavoring.

By comparison the other meat entrees are nowhere near so flashy. The braised lamb shanks ( agnello alle manzane ) are cooked well-done, soft enough to cut with a spoon, but the sauce of eggplant chunks in a little tomato sauce is somehow drab.

For dessert, there’s a ricotta cheesecake of unparalleled creaminess that is positively rich. A chocolate torte made with red wine tastes like a huge chocolate truffle candy with a little winy bite to it. The mandarin orange tart might have been made with fresh tangerines.

Good work, Sostanza. Go forth and clone no more.

Recommended dishes: polpettine misteriose, $6.95; ravioli allo zafferano, $10.50; bistecca del mangione, $17.95; costolette svitate, $17.95; ricotta cheesecake, $5.

Sostanza, 12100 Wilshire Blvd., West Los Angeles, telephone (213) 207-4273. Open for lunch from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Monday through Friday, for dinner from 6 to 10 p.m. Monday through Thursday, till 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday; closed Sunday. Full bar. Validated parking in lot (enter on Amherst); valet parking at dinner. Major credit cards accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $35 to $70.