RESTAURANT REVIEW : Rustic Food Makes Hip Foodies Sing the Praises of L’Opera

The people look pleased, dressed to the nines and beaming as they wait for the parking valets. L’Opera is clearly the hottest thing in Long Beach.

It really is hot. L’Opera has all the Westside Italian accessories, starting with suitably grand decor: a shiny display kitchen behind glass walls that nearly reach the ceiling, with Ionic columns and even a couple of architraves etched on them for fun. There’s a hip Italian and California wine list. There’s good hot focaccia bread as soon as you sit down, along with cruets of olive oil and excellent balsamic vinegar.

The appetizers include some obligatory twists on classics such as vitello salmonato , a variation on the veal dish that traditionally comes in a tuna-flavored sauce; salmon as a substitute, though, strikes me as a little too loud for this exquisite, thin-sliced veal.

But the appetizers not to miss often sound like cliches. Antipasto misto is the usual Italian sausages with sliced mozzarella and pickled vegetables--but what rich-flavored salame and mortadella , what appetizing pickled vegetables! What aromatic prosciutto, too (you can also get this imported prosciutto as an appetizer by itself, with big delicious chunks of Reggiano Parmesan). You can even order prosciutto d’oca : gorgeous, paper-thin slices made from goose, very smoky and powerfully flavored, with a generous skirt of fat.

The pastas are decidedly the main attraction. With one exception I know of (relatively dull fusilli with broccoli and potatoes), they are stupendous. Take the mezzelune aragosta : exquisite flat half-moon pastas with a light, lyrical filling of lobster and ricotta, in a fresh tomato sauce with a dash of Marsala. There are a lot of lobster-filled pastas around, but this is one of the most delicate.

Orecchiette al sugo di castrato are unusual: little coin-shaped pastas in a tomato sauce addictively flavored with lamb and rosemary. Fettuccine alla norcina sounds pretty straightforward, simply fettuccine in cream tomato sauce with spicy sausage. However, while the spice in the sausages turns out to be just fennel (to be sure, rather a lot of fennel), the noodles themselves are as light as a cloud, rolled almost paper-thin.

The lasagna vegetariana , which sounds like a charitable act rather than a treat, happens to be one of the best things here. Dressed with a bit of fresh sweet tomato sauce on one side and a sprinkling of parsley on the other to represent the Italian flag (that silly though cute custom), the luscious pasta is filled with a wonderful concentrated mushroom paste, essentially a French duxelles mixture.

Quite a few pastas are staggeringly rich. The plush-textured gnocchi come in stupefying mascarpone sauce. Panzerotti are square ravioli filled with duck in a sauce of mascarpone and walnuts. A great combination, by the way; why don’t we have duck with walnuts all the time?

As is often true at Italian restaurants, the meat course tends to be a slight letdown following the pastas. Oh, there are some quite good things: a hearty roasted free-range chicken with a simple Dijon mustard sauce; a dainty grilled chicken breast; the surprising treccia d’agnello , which the menu calls braided lamb--not a misprint for breaded or braised , but long tender pieces of lamb braided together and grilled.

But the bistecca fiorentina , sprinkled with olive oil and balsamic vinegar though it may be, is only a moderately exciting steak; it may just be cooked too slowly for American tastes. The sauce of grapes and brandy on the somewhat dry pork noisettes is disappointingly fussy, while a flavorful, tender veal chop is treated to a rather vague green olive sauce. The mascarpone sauce on the veal scallops is so absurdly rich you can’t taste anything.

And there’s one entree I positively don’t like: the intriguing-sounding trout with prosciutto. Despite L’Opera’s good prosciutto, this turned out to be a rather dry trout with a rather old and funky aroma when I ordered it.

At dessert time, we find a wisecracking mind at work in the pastry kitchen. Salame di cioccolata looks like a joke ( salame -like brown slices flecked with light bits of hazelnut and the occasional raisin) but tastes like the lightest and yet most intense of chocolate candies. Sacchetto di cioccolata is a comical shopping bag made of chocolate that has evidently fallen over, spilling fruits on the plate. In another dessert, a dense chocolate “volcano” is surrounded by a lava flow of raspberry syrup spotted with berries.

The dressed-to-the-nines people waiting on this Long Beach sidewalk are beaming with good reason. Though I’d often get sidetracked by the pastas and skip the entrees, and despite the occasional clinker elsewhere, L’Opera is hot.

L’Opera Ristorante, 101 Pine Ave., Long Beach, (213) 491-0066. Lunch 11:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday, dinner 5-11 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 5-12 p.m. Friday through Sunday. Full bar. Complimentary valet parking. All major credit cards. Dinner for two, food only, $31-$70.