RESTAURANT REVIEW : An Upscale Italian Meal If You Don’t Mind a Fortissimo ‘Happy Birthday’

When the owner of Cafe Giuseppe! recently read me the specials off a blackboard, he translated as he went along. Risotto was “Italian rice,” cioppino was “seafood soup,” mascarpone was “Italian cream cheese.” I was glad that the understated translations were confined to Italian food, lest it be said that Michelangelo was a painter, that the Pope lived in a church and the “Inferno” was a travelogue.

Cafe Giuseppe! is an attractive, upscale restaurant whose most outstanding visual characteristic is its green dining room. The walls are painted a solid, toned-down kelly green, as close to emerald as interior wall paint can get. Linens are pale pink. There are some posters and a few droopy philodendrons--in terms of greenery, plants are no match for those walls.

On a Tuesday night, there are more staffers than customers. We’re greeted at the door by a cheerful Italian fellow, who tells us that we’ll have Peter, “the big guy” who is an Australian, as our waiter. Sure enough, The Big Guy did the menu translation in an authentic Down Under accent. He pronounced pollo to rhyme with hollow.

We started with endive wrapped in prosciutto served with shiitake mushroom caps in a veal reduction sauce. Separately, the components were tasty; together, a curiosity. A cold Sicilian antipasto had a tablespoon of good caponata but was otherwise unremarkable. Dinner comes with minestrone or a green salad: both were utterly bland and ordinary. My pollo alla griglia , half a grilled chicken, was plain, but it came with perfectly cooked green beans and carrots. The hit of the evening was linguini con muscoli : plenty of good black mussels on a huge heap of linguine awash in a well-herbed broth spiked with white wine and olive oil.

When we left, the waiter who greeted us saw us out. He seemed worried and urged us to return. “There was nobody here tonight,” he kept saying.

On a Friday night, sure enough, Cafe Giuseppe! was packed. Clearly, the 7-year-old restaurant has a loyal following. If we had just picked up our pace a little, we might have beaten the two women ahead of us to the door, and the last available booth. As it happened, despite our reservations, we were seated at a small table on an aisle close to the bar, in what felt like the fringes of the restaurant. The light, bentwood chairs were not particularly comfortable.

On this night, the owner himself, David, took our drink orders and read the specials. We then ordered dinner from a cheerful young waiter. When I couldn’t make up my mind among several entrees, the waiter said, “I’ll take care of you.”

We started with provoletta alla oreganato, roasted cheese with olive oil and garlic, served with sun-dried tomatoes and a slice of roasted red pepper. We had fun spinning the hot cheese up onto chunks of bread and topping it with the tomatoes. I also had a creamy soup that was thick, “tomatoey” and filled with plump mussels.

While we were working on our appetizers, David, flanked by two or three other staff members came up to the next table with a dessert-cum-candle. He proceeded to sing “Happy Birthday” a cappella in a reedy and strident operatic tenor. It was all terribly dramatic: He hit the high notes with such explosiveness that we nearly popped off our chairs.

Our entrees provided revelations. The so-called risotto (a.k.a. Italian rice) under the twin chicken breasts in the pollo saporito was not risotto per se. Something serious--a good gob of butter, Parmesan cheese, 20 minutes of stirring and one or two of beating, i.e. the bare essentials of what makes rice into risotto-- had been left out. It looked like yellow-colored rice with flecks of peppers. Indeed, the whole dish most resembled chicken divan, except for a curiously large dose of dill.

My dinner was a revelation because, as you may recall, I didn’t know what it was to be. The waiter arrived with two big plates of food. “The chef’s feeling generous tonight,” he said. The capellacci pomodoro , a big over-sized ravioli, was stuffed with ricotta cheese and spinach and topped with a good fresh tomato sauce. It was simple, pure, delicious. But the Italian sausage with fettuccine had a musty, pungent-tasting brown sauce full of green olives, capers, mushrooms, onions, tomatoes and mismatched dried herbs: It tasted like a kitchen accident.

I was doing my best with all this food when another birthday dessert suddenly emerged from the kitchen. It occasioned a repeat of the same conversation-killing operatic performance. When it concluded, my friend whispered, “When are most people born? In the summer? I don’t want to be around here when there are more than two birthdays a night.”

Which brings me to a final question: Would I ever return to this restaurant? Well, if for some reason I had to meet someone for an upscale meal in Northridge, I probably would. Unless, of course, it was my birthday.

CAFE GIUSEPPE!

18515 Roscoe Blvd., Northridge.

(818) 349-9090.

Open for lunch from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Monday through Friday; for dinner from 5:30 to 10 p.m. nightly. There is a $10 minimum per person. All major credit cards accepted. Beer and wine only. Parking lot. Dinner for two, food only. $27 to $55.

Recommended dishes: provoletta alla oreganato, $6.50; linguini con muscoli, $16.50; capellacci pomodoro, $14.50.