RESTAURANTS / MAX JACOBSON : Conceptual Prego Menu Reads Better Than It Plays

Prego is still one of Orange County’s most impressively designed restaurants: a gorgeous Tuscan villa with high vaulted ceilings and a gleaming open kitchen along one wall, dominated by a huge rotating brass rotisserie. Soaring glass panels separate the dining areas. Monster tropical plants dominate the entrance.

The menu has been carefully designed here, too. This is a concept restaurant where everything from breadsticks to mints have been market-tested and given a stamp of approval by the corporate fathers of the upscale Spectrum restaurant chain. Perhaps that accounts for the restaurant’s unbridled success. Prego has been jammed to the rafters with a well-heeled clientele from Day One and shows no signs of slowing down.

The cuisine is Tuscan, sort of. Dishes are simple and direct: homemade pastas, simple sauces, grilled meats served with roasted potatoes. The new executive chef, Luigi Giordani, is actually a Roman, rather than a Tuscan, and plans to introduce more of his own regional dishes in the near future, if the company lets him.

The former chef, Tim Dobravolskis, has moved up the corporate ladder and now oversees five of Spectrum’s Southern California kitchens. “We get everyone from Newport Beach yuppie to Anaheim local--everything from Topsider to tuxedo,” Dobravolskis said by phone recently, “So we aim to play it safe. The concept has worked so far, so why tamper with success?”

I can think of one reason. Prego is a stunning restaurant, but it just isn’t as good as it could be. The truth is, I am never as happy eating off this menu as I am reading it. It isn’t in playing it safe that the restaurant occasionally slips up. It’s a simple matter of cooking. “In a restaurant of this size,” Dobravolskis said, “you have to depend on your line cooks.” Sorry, Tim, but these guys can be awfully erratic.

Why else would well-conceived dishes made from first-rate ingredients fail to impress? Sadly overcooked spaghettini spoil a wonderfully rich, grainy pesto sauce. Luganega (thin coiled sausages) come flanked by vegetables quite sodden with olive oil, making a little pool on the bottom of the plate. A pool of high grade olive oil, to be sure.

That said, there are many things to relish from Prego’s kitchen. The antipasti are uniformly delicious. Soncino con anitra is a tempting salad of mache, cold roasted duck breast, goat cheese and balsamic vinegar; an intelligent blend of northern Italy and California. Insalata al salmone affumicato is arugula topped with lightly smoked salmon, bow-tie pasta and plenty of capers. It sounds quirky but works like a charm.

The pizzas are even better. They generally have a thick crust and are the ideal size as an intermediate course for about three people. My favorite among them is pizza alla salsiccia , topped with chunky sausage, salami, fresh tomato sauce and oregano, all partially concealed under a blanket of bubbling mozzarella.

But the best things served at Prego come from that rotisserie: duck, rabbit, chicken and/or leg of lamb, all of which you’ll smell as you enter the restaurant, long before you see them. I have tasted only the duck and the lamb, but I am willing to predict that the other two are every bit as terrific. All the meats here are rubbed with fresh rosemary and sage, an irresistible perfection of nature, and look as well dressed as most of the customers.

The pastas are a different story. Trenette alle cozze affumicate , a narrow, linguine-like pasta, was good in itself but came with smoked mussels that were hard and chewy and tasted canned. Agnolotti d’aragosta is a dish of crescent-shaped pockets filled with lobster, prosciutto and ricotta in lemon and lobster sauce that never quite lives up to its billing. I couldn’t taste anything but ricotta in the filling, though the sauce was so good I didn’t leave a single drop.

Neither are the grills, as distinguished from the spit-roasted dishes, always good. Grilled salmon, a daily special, was dry and salty, hardly the chic way to prepare salmon these days. But pollo all’aiglio e rosmarino , Prego’s trademark garlic chicken breast with rosemary, fared much better with its crisp blackened skin and a lemon flavor permeating every bite.

As for desserts, there are the usual northern Italian offerings; gelati, tiramisu, semifreddo and various pastries. The tiramisu is especially good: a fat, indulgent one with a double portion of mascarpone and what must be a tablespoon of cocoa per slice.

I do have a couple of bones to pick with Prego regarding service: The seating can be awfully rigid here, so you had better arrive bang on time for your reservation. We were exactly 10 minutes late one evening and waited half an hour for a table. The kitchen can be sluggish, too. While you are waiting for your first course, it’s easy to fill up on those good bread sticks--but that’s hardly what you have come for.

I should also say something about the wine list, on the menu’s left page. There’s a wide variety of good Italian wines on this list, and I especially urge you to try one. Times wine writer Dan Berger recommends an ’83 Chianti Classico Machiavelli for $18 and an ’84 Barolo Ceretto for $33. Interestingly, if you show a lot of interest in wine they may bring out a short, erratically priced list that does have some real bargains on it. On Dan Berger’s word I tried the ’88 Ca’ del Bosco Chardonnay ($30) and found it delightfully fruity and springlike.

For all its grand style, Prego is moderately priced. Antipasti are $4.85 to $8.75. Pizzas are $6.95 to $10.95. Pastas are $8.50 to $11.75. Grills are $9.95 to $17.50. Desserts are $3.95 to $4.95.

PREGO

18420 Von Karman Ave., Irvine

(714) 553-1333

Open every day, Mondays from 11:30 a.m. to 10:30 p.m., Tuesdays through Thursdays from 11:30 a.m. to 11 p.m, Fridays from 11:30 a.m. to midnight, Saturdays from 5 p.m. to midnight, and Sundays from 5 p.m. to 10:30 p.m.

All major cards.