Restaurant Review : Far Niente: A Full-Bore Westside-type Italian Restaurant in Glendale

Well, well. Everybody’s dressed to the nines here, and Glendale doesn’t dress up for just anything. Not only that, but every last seat in the place seems to be filled. Granted, it’s Saturday night, but a local informant calculates that there are probably more people in Far Niente Ristorante at this moment than in the movie theater next door.

Location, location, location. Far Niente is a good, full-bore Westside-type Italian restaurant in Glendale. As a result it pretty much owns this town (or at least Brand Boulevard), Westside Italian food-wise.

It’s not just a matter of having the right foods, either. Far Niente has a Look and an Attitude. On one wall there’s a stark, colossal painting of the Roman Colosseum spread over three massive canvases. On the other, three more big canvases show the Leaning Tower . . . first straight, then leaning, then collapsing big-time.

Far Niente also serves at least one unusual thing. When you sit down, you are brought some cracker-like pizza bread in a bread basket, but that’s not it. It’s the big, steaming-hot puffball of the same bread they bring a couple of minutes later, fresh from the oven, brushed with olive oil and rosemary. It’s tempting to eat this entertaining object before it starts to collapse, although it may well destroy your appetite.

This is just as well in the appetizer department, which is not the high point of the menu. The calamari do have a pleasantly chewy consistency. But check the Caesar salad: Many strange things are being done in Caesar’s name these days, but this version, with its thick, faintly sweet dressing, of a color tinged bruise-purple, is one of the strangest. The best part is actually the fresh croutons.

By contrast, the pastas all seem solid. Penne alla puttanesca , for instance, though cautious in the red pepper department, has a good, strong flavor of olives and capers. Spaghetti in pesto sauce is plenty al dente , and the tortellini in cream sauce are generously stuffed with veal.

The best of the pastas has to be fettuccine tre P. The three P’s in question are piselli (peas), panna (cream) and prosciutto, which in this case is a dark, strongly flavored, bacon-like ham. This cream sauce is almost impossibly rich, with a yellow-brown tinge to it from reduction and possibly also from the ham.

The meat entrees are impressively meaty. The best is the big veal chop in a thick, dark sauce of meat juices with lots of browned onions and a little bit of balsamic vinegar. Sometimes on special there’s a rack of lamb, sweet and tender, with a simple, undemanding brown sauce. All the meat entrees come with dangerously hot, fried chunks of new potato among the vegetables.

The battuta profumata , it must be said, is one of the stranger versions of this dish. The beef is puffy and has a texture like liver, sort of like an exquisite Wendy’s burger. It comes with one clove of garlic, one pepper pod and one sprig of rosemary, all presumably fried with it. The half lemon on the plate may be intended for the white beans served on the side, but actually helps the beef a little.

Far Niente does not go in for cutesy dishes on the whole, but scampi e cappesante are certainly cute--prawns wrapped around sizable scallops, like a strange orange-and-white life form, served in very rich butter sauce. The fish on special, such as mahi mahi, may come on a bed of tomatoes and onions dressed with vinegar, more or less like fish on top of a little bit of salad.

The night I tried the creme brulee happened to be its first night on Far Niente’s menu, and it was an inauspicious debut: soupy-soft, and tasting somehow both insipid and medicinal. The other desserts are better, though the cheesecake and the cannoli aren’t worth a long drive.

The tirami su is something else, on the staggeringly rich end of the tirami su spectrum. There is definitely a flavor of coffee and cocoa in it, but basically it’s overpoweringly rich. As many as five people have been known to stick their spoons into a single serving, exclaim over it and not finish it.

The best of the desserts by far is the chocolate souffle, which is better than at many a French restaurant. Miraculously the interior is neither runny nor dried out. It’s just about worth dressing up for.

Recommended dishes: calamari fritti, $8.50; fettuccine tre P, $13.50; lombata di vitello, $16; chocolate souffle, $6.50.

Far Niente Ristorante, 204 1/2 N. Brand Blvd., Glendale. (818) 242-3835. Open for lunch Monday through Friday 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., for dinner Monday through Thursday, 6 to 9:30 p.m., Friday and Saturday, to 10 p.m. Beer and wine. Street parking. All major credit cards accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $30 to $75.