San Diego Spotlight : Cooking at Ruffino Lacks Finesse of Namesake Wine

The name Ruffino inevitably brings to mind Chianti, one of Italy’s best-known wines and certainly one of the most polished. Since Chianti (Ruffino is one of the leading labels) comes from Tuscany, it has helped shape a regional cuisine, centered on the cooking of Florence, that is recognized as simple but sophisticated.

A relatively new establishment in a University City shopping center has taken the name Ristorante Ruffino. The place has a nice look, decent service and a menu that seems well-chosen, but much of the cooking seems of the non-vintage variety--the expected flavors largely are present, but are blended without finesse. At times, the menu seems a triumph of good intentions over expertise, as with the first entree listing, which describes the crespelle (crepes stuffed with cheese and mushrooms) as baked with an “Alfredo cream sauce.” As every Italian cook knows, and as cannot be repeated too frequently, “Alfredo” is a method, not a sauce, and any effort to turn the former into the latter debases the cuisine. In Italy, this sort of dish would be cloaked with besciamella (in French, bechamel ), a simple white sauce that through careful cooking acquires a silken texture vastly smoother than would seem possible for a simple blending of butter, flour and milk.

There are some unusual and pleasant offerings here, including a cooked-to-order basket of striesce , cruller-like lengths of yeast dough, crisped in deep fat and sprinkled with a bit of course salt. Although this may be close kin to the “fried dough” mentioned in books about hard times, it has a good flavor and makes an appetizing nibble while the table waits for the more substantial dishes. The kitchen has some talent with soups, as evidenced by one brew du jour , a veal stock with chopped bell peppers, an untypical concoction with a lively flavor and a rich, almost unctuous body.

Other soups are stracciatella , or chicken broth thickened with a mixture of beaten egg and Parmesan, here made alla fiorentina by the addition of spinach, and tortellini in brodo , or stuffed pasta submerged in broth. These are offered both a la carte and as an alternative to the salads included in the price of all main courses; the so-called Caesar salad was made with fresh, quality greens, but the dressing had little in common with the real thing and the croutons, flecked with dried dill and perhaps other herbs (most out of place in a Caesar salad), had a suspiciously commercial appearance and flavor.

First course choices also include mushroom caps stuffed with a smooth but rather bland mince of veal and chicken (at a guess, it is the same filling used in the cannelloni Rossini, starred by the menu as a house specialty); stuffed mussels; a fairly typical vegetarian antipasto plate sprinkled, quite out of character, with Greek feta cheese, and the increasingly common fried calamari. This last item consisted solely of fried rings cut from large specimens and did not include the tiny, nutty-sweet whole squids that star in superior servings. It also was offered with tartar sauce, not at all an Italian gesture; marinara sauce is more common, while a simple squeeze of lemon juice is preferable above all.

The pasta list features some surprises, including linguine con agnello , or sauced with lamb and feta cheese, and lamb lasagna, again seasoned with feta (this cheese, while comfortable with lamb, just isn’t Italian). There are the usual spaghettini with meatballs, linguine in white clam sauce and fettuccine primavera (with vegetables and, here, white sauce), along with tortellini in a creamed mushroom sauce and a house creation of bow-tie macaroni, chunks of chicken breast, broccoli and prosciutto in a mushroom sauce.

The rigatoni alla Cornelia, described as baked with peas, mushrooms and pancetta (cured belly bacon) in a rose cream sauce (technically a white sauce mixed with tomato sauce), reads well on the menu but arrived as an indelicate jumble in which the sauce was a ratio of 10 parts coarse tomato sauce to one part white sauce. It had the virtue of being served in plenty, an attribute shared by the rigatoni vecchi tempi , or “old time rigatoni.” This is the sort of dish commonly served in East Coast Italian households when the contents of the pot of red sauce often made on the weekend begin to run low, and this simple, baked casserole of pasta, meatballs, tomato sauce and mozzarella can be very, very good. Here, it is merely filling; Ruffino’s red sauce is rugged, rustic and aggressive with garlic, but not very appealing.

This red sauce reappears in a number of entrees, including the pollo Vesuvio, a chicken breast topped with eggplant, sauce and mozzarella, that when sampled was found adequate but without finesse. The entree list offers a great deal of chicken, including in the parmigiana, Marsala and piccata treatments, alla fiorentina with spinach and cream sauce, and alla pizzaiola with bell peppers, mushrooms and tomatoes.

Veal, conversely, is offered on a more restricted basis, including as a saltimbocca that offered a none-too-tender slice of veal under a topping of prosciutto, mozzarella and a brown wine sauce heavily flavored with garlic, which has no place in saltimbocca . The veal in the involtini all’ucelletto , a specialty of the cooking of the far Italian North, again could have been more tender; mascarpone cheese seasoned with sage filled these sauteed meat rolls. Rather more care went into the preparation of a similar dish, the melanzane alla sorrentino , in which slices of eggplant replace the meat and the stuffing changes to an herbed blend of ricotta and Romano cheeses. The restaurant’s all-purpose tomato sauce tops this preparation.

The dessert tray features two in-house preparations, the inevitable chocolate mousse and the nearly as ubiquitous tiramisu , a sweet pudding of liqueur, cake and whipped mascarpone cheese. Richer than most, this pleasant finale was one of Ruffino’s finer offerings.

RUFFINO

3202 Governor Drive, University City

452-6000

Lunch weekdays, dinner nightly

Dinner entrees $7.25 to $13.50.

Dinner for two, including a glass of wine

each, tax and tip, about $25 to $55

Credit cards accepted