RESTAURANT REVIEW : Capri Offers Ample Taste of Italy in Sparse Surroundings

Capri is hot. It’s one of the most distinctive new Italian restaurants to come along in years, possibly the most distinctive Italian restaurant since Caffe Angeli or Il Giardino.

For starters, it has an arresting, brutal look: chalk-white walls with no art on them, floors left rugged with tile cement after the tiles were torn up, and except for the red from a bowl of rosebuds at each table, no color in the place. Capri’s owner, who ran the front end of the West Beach Cafe in its early days, is the designer Alona Hamilton Cooke, and the effect must be intentional.

The food is the star, though. Chef Fabio Flagiello produces a new menu every two or three days (presented to you calligraphed in Magic Marker) that makes it clear that an incredibly sophisticated Italian restaurant has at last arrived in Venice.

Take the pastas. Sfogliata di cilantro e cappesante is scallops, mushrooms and thickened veal stock wrapped up in a luxurious sheet of pasta about five inches wide. The occasional cilantro leaf is visible inside the pasta, like a bee in amber. Tagliatelle verdi nascoste are very pale green noodles, mixed with ground meat and thick meat juices, folded up in a hank and wrapped in a thin fried sheet of eggplant.

Even penne all’ amatriciana , a semi-familiar dish in our town, is somehow exotic here. The sauce of onions, tomatoes, bacon and red pepper has a sweet, elusive aroma like some kind of fruit, possibly pomegranate. It’s like penne all’ amatriciana with a little bit of Iranian fesenjan sauce in it.

Meat entrees might include something as conventional as grilled lamb chops with meat juices, garlic and rosemary, but they tend to be far more operatic. For instance, in anatra con bresaola e uva nera , paper-thin cured beef provides a funky, earthy background for chunks of duck and cooked red grapes. It is an impressive dish to look at, a symphony in red and brown.

The chef sometimes indulges a restrained taste for mint, as in scaloppine con caprino e menta : veal scallops on a star pattern of braised leeks in a pool of meat reduction made grainy and slightly tart with goat cheese and subtly scented with mint. And he seems to like mascarpone . Baked chicken breast may come in a sauce that is really nothing but pureed asparagus with a square of rich mascarpone cheese melting in one corner of it.

By comparison with the entrees, the appetizers tend to be simple bit players such as eggplant puree with basil, or grilled vegetables, or spinach salad with a sharp red wine vinaigrette. Sometimes there’s something more elaborate, such as grilled escarole sprinkled with Parmesan and pine nuts and covered with a big sheet of prosciutto, or mussels and chunks of polenta in a rich, garlicky romato sauce.

A few more elements: There is an unusual bread, a little sweet, very yeasty and with a dense crumb, that is served with a tiny bottle of olive oil. This kitchen likes to undercook slices of potato. They’re tolerable, but the dry, chewy texture takes some getting used to.

The dessert list is usually only two or three items. There might be an excellent chocolate cake, really a sort of walnut chocolate brownie with a thick chocolate frosting on a plate half dusted with cocoa. The tirami su is a frothy one filled with cream, and sometimes there’s a serviceable lemon mousse tart with caramel patterns on top.

But this might not be all. Sometimes the pastas include gnocchi susine : two beautifully light gnocchi , each filled with a piece of yellow plum, which would make a good dessert for those who do not demand (or want) a lot of sugar at the end of a meal.

We’ve been inundated with Italian restaurants for the last couple of years, mostly quite good. But for me, none of them gives off sparks like Capri.

Capri, 1616 W. Washington Blvd., Venice. (213) 392-8777. Open for lunch Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday; dinner Wednesday through Monday. Wine only. Street parking. MasterCard and Visa accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $34-$56.