Sorrentino’s Branches Out From Basic Italian in Its New, More Elegant Restaurant

It’s rare enough in the restaurant trade that a situation comes along in which more truly is less.

Yet that is exactly what occurred earlier this year in a Clairemont shopping center when the long-established, storefront-based Sorrentino’s Pizza and More graduated into much grander circumstances with the opening of Sorrentino’s Ristorante Italiano.

The Pizza and More segment of the operation still exists adjacent to the new restaurant in the Diane Shopping Center, and a very spare place it is, with a deli case devoted to just a few typical Italian items and a wall-mounted menu listing pizzas and basic, everyday pastas.

The new dining room marks a giant step up, however, in both atmosphere and menu. The sponge-painted, purple walls look lurid when the lighting glares--as it often does--but rather classy when the hostess adjusts the dimmer, and the banquettes are comfortable and reasonably intimate. It would be going rather far to describe Sorrentino’s as formal, although it is fair to say that the place is more formal than the great run of San Diego’s neighborhood establishments, and its opening may be another sign that the city is gaining in sophistication.

The menu places Sorrentino’s somewhere between the family-style Italian houses that once reigned supreme and the high-style, high-priced restaurants that have come to the fore in recent years. Sorrentino’s occupies the middle ground almost exclusively; one other place that comes to mind as sharing this ground is Michaelangelo’ on Rosecrans Street, which adopts a more casual style but offers a menu equally balanced between carefully prepared, old-country pastas and entrees and crowd-pleasing pizzas.

The menu seems rather like those that used to be common in New York and New Jersey neighborhoods in the pre- alta cucina days, which is to say that, although it is heavily influenced by Sicilian and Neapolitan cooking styles, it recognizes that tomato sauce marks a starting point rather than a conclusion. Italian-born proprietors Victor and Vita Sorrentino in fact operated a pair of restaurants in Manhattan in the 1960s before opening Pizza and More.

The pizza dough upon which the Sorrentino family fortunes may be said to have risen serves as the base of several interesting starters, including a bruschetta baked with a coating of olive oil and grated Parmesan that is topped at serving time with chopped raw tomatoes, garlic and basil, and a robust focaccia decorated with rosemary, Gorgonzola cheese and sauteed red onions. A rather more elegant offering, the spiedino alla caprese , wraps a thin layer of dough around pesto and sliced prosciutto and mozzarella; after baking, this is cut into rounds that display appetizing spiral designs.

Several slices of spiedino accompanied pairs of broiled, garlic-and-crumb topped shrimp and mushroom caps offered as a special hot appetizer one evening. The plate served two and was quite pleasant (even if the spiedini were the best part and the shrimp seemed dispensable) but seemed rather grandly priced at $8.95.

Soup and salad choices also steer common themes in less-than-typical directions. Among the soups, an interesting choice is the polpettine in brodo , which garnishes a full-bodied broth with small meatballs. The salad list offers several sized to share, including the Sorrentino, which comes off nicely with its base of mixed greens and lavish topping of shredded cheese, olives, mushrooms, artichoke hearts and pickled peppers.

The pasta list begins with the obligatory spaghetti in red sauce but gets down to business quickly with such happy choices as linguine alla cafone (olive oil, garlic, parsley and sun-dried tomatoes); pappardelle tossed with an uncooked garnish of chopped tomatoes, basil, garlic and oil, and angel hair pasta in puttanesca , or fresh tomato sauce flavored with black olives and capers. A guest fairly described the freshly made tortelloni in porcini mushroom sauce as “unbelievable and wonderful;” these little mouthfuls include an excellent filling of mingled ricotta, mascarpone and reggiano cheeses. The best part of the dish, however, is the light-bodied cream sauce studded both with meaty porcini and with minced shallots, which add a little chew and bite. With its unusually delicate texture and subtle flavoring, the sauce actually seems quite French.

The entree list offers veal scallops cooked in six ways and chicken in five of the same, as well as a pair of shrimp offerings and eggplant and calamari steak in the parmigiana style. Most veal and chicken choices include the simple, wine-and-butter deglazing sauces that Italians make better than anyone else. The shrimp choice is between gamberi alla diavolo , which sets the shrimp adrift in a sea of spicy tomato sauce, and the more refined gamberi alla Mario, in which the sauteed critters are finished with a white wine and butter sauce flavored with a great deal of lemon, garlic and shallot. This was nice except for the excessive use of lemon, which made the dish a little too astringent.

Sorrentino’s also serves pizza in the main dining room, and the menu recommends several appealing specialties. The bianca offers crust topped with a souffle-like mixture of cheeses, but no tomato; the quattro stagione (“four seasons”) includes meats, seafoods and vegetables, which is all to the good, but also pineapple, which no matter how you look at it seems out of place.

The restaurant prides itself on its version of tiramisu , the ever-more-ubiquitous dessert of cake layered with sweetened mascarpone cheese, cocoa and, sometimes, custard sauce. The house version is rather soupy, rather sweet and rather nice.

SORRENTINO’S RISTORANTE ITALIANO

4724 Clairemont Mesa Blvd., San Diego

483-1811

Lunch served weekdays, dinner nightly

Credit cards accepted

Dinner for two, with one glass of house wine each, tax and tip, $20 to $60