RESTAURANT REVIEW : The Signals Got Crossed at Divino

Let’s not fault Divino, a Woodland Hills Italian restaurant formerly called Trovare, for pushing all those conceptual buttons. It’s just that sometimes they push too many of them at once.

I guess I’m referring to the way the place looks. The silver and black motif behind the bar would be garish even in a disco. My eyes smart just thinking about it.

Then there’s a pastel mural of Italian street life that takes up an entire wall, right out of one of those mom and pop places in a strip mall. The only thing cornier would be Perry Como crooning behind a barber pole.

But it doesn’t end there. The center of the dining room is chic, even sophisticated. There are two rows of ceiling-high columns, their dark green color looking especially elegant against a flurry of white tablecloths. And there is even a rooftop gazebo, complete with triangular arches and sky-lit windows.

So frankly, I’m puzzled. Maybe a bunch of different decorators were assigned different parts of the restaurant. Yes, that might explain it. Either that, or maybe somebody got the signals crossed in the transporter room.

Things are much less confusing when you get to the kitchen. It’s one of those handsome, open kitchens, where you can keep an eye on the chef (a young fellow named Kurt Gardner) and his staff, instead of shifting them constantly about the dining room.

Gardner’s food pushes a lot of conceptual buttons, too, but this time at a more welcoming pace. The very first button is a basket of wonderful foccaccia bread from the restaurant’s wood-burning oven (another button), pita-thin and redolent of basil, garlic and oregano. Other buttons are located on his attractive menu, where a host of knee-jerk-fashionable northern Italian dishes are given occasional twists of style.

Carpaccio is one example. The chef lines a plate with good, rare prime beef, then sprinkles it with the requisite amount of capers. But instead of burying it all under a mountain of cheese, he puts a small mound of Parmesan in the center of the plate and then drizzles pesto all around. It’s a wonderful dish.

A salad of radicchio, spinach, fennel and gorgonzola is another delight. It’s nearly as decorous as the restaurant, with brightly contrasting colors that work the eye as well as the palate. But the tastes are equally contrastive, and the fresh leaves seem perfectly balanced against the pungent power of the cheese.

I wasn’t impressed by soups here, despite the fact that our brash, almost confrontational waiter practically forced us to taste them. There are only two: white bean soup with pasta (pasta fagioli) and minestrone. I found both to be weak and dilute. Despite a certain fresh quality, I just couldn’t taste what I was eating.

There is a long list of pizzas, all of which are cooked in the wood-burning oven. And based on what I tasted, I’ll vouch for any of them. Particularly good are the four cheese pizza made with smoked mozzarella, Parmesan, gorgonzola and ricotta, and the barbecued chicken model, with more smoked mozzarella and a sweet, homemade barbecue sauce.

Pastas are a bit more erratic here, occasionally prepared with a surfeit of oil or cooked a shade too long. The best one here is probably linguine with fresh clams, served in a bowl with those tiny razor clams. The broth on the bottom of the bowl is wonderful; you could almost make a meal of it. And the clams in this dish are wonderfully soft and chewy.

Two other pastas did not fare nearly as well. Scrapalla pasta is basically linguine with a tempting combination topping of chicken, sweet sausage, garlic, olive oil and red pepper. All would have been well had someone not burned the garlic and been cavalier with the olive oil.

And fusilli turns out not to be fusilli at all. Instead of the spiral noodles, you get two strands of tagliatelle that are entwined like lovers, a really new twist if you will. It’s a good conceit, I’ll admit, with broccoli, sun-dried tomato and lots of Parmesan.

Main dishes are usually an afterthought at Italian restaurants, but not here. Divino’s garlic prawns are excellent and the prawns stuffed with crab meat are fine, too. The saltimbocca boasts good veal and better prosciutto. The veal chop is properly thick, with an unctuous wild mushroom sauce.

Don’t bother about dessert, though. They only have cheesecake, and although it is from the Cheesecake Factory, it is apt to be stale and gummy, as mine was on separate occasions.

This is actually the first Italian restaurant I’ve eaten in for quite some time where I couldn’t get tiramisu. That pushy waiter informed us that “we had it, but we 86’d it.” That actually came as a relief. I’ve eaten an awful lot of tiramisu lately, and that waiter had pushed enough of my buttons for one evening anyway.

Recommended dishes: carpaccio, $8.25, radicchio, spinach, fennel, gorgonzola, $4.50, four cheese pizza, $8.95, linguine with fresh clams, $11.25.

Divino, 21618 Ventura Blvd., Woodland Hills; (818) 340-4451. Lunch from 11 a.m.-2 p.m. Monday-Friday, dinner 5-10:30 p.m. daily. Full bar. Parking lot in rear. Visa, MasterCard and American Express. Dinner for two, food only, $30-$50.