San Diego Spotlight : At Last--a Nice Restaurant, Good Food and Easy Prices

Diogenes thought he had it rough when he took his lantern through the night streets searching for an honest Athenian. At least he wasn’t charged with finding the ideal restaurant.

Over the years, a frequent request from readers has been for a review of “a nice restaurant with good food that doesn’t cost much.” This isn’t quite like asking for pie in the sky, but it’s close. In San Diego, good food no longer is a scarce commodity, but notable cooking at moderate prices remains very hard to locate.

A new eatery on the edge of Old Town--where the tourists are unlikely to discover a restaurant anywhere near the ideal--comes quite near to fitting the bill perfectly. Parreno’s, an Italian house that emphasizes the zesty Sicilian side of the cuisine, occupies the redecorated quarters that housed the once popular but long-defunct Eric’s Rib Place.

For so new a restaurant, there is a sense of anachronism about the place that is difficult to define but can be sensed within moments of entering. The tone recalls certain types of San Diego restaurants popular in the 1960s in that it is not plain but not too fancy; think of it as a nice restaurant with freckles. Perhaps a bit of the anachronism arises from actual deja vu ; head chef Robert Nouri is from the old Sorrento’s, and assistant chef Nino Dobrich is the legend in his own time who operated Nino’s after supervising the kitchen at Old Trieste in the early, glory days.

Even the furnishings have respectable restaurant pedigrees: The table settings are from Lubach’s, the tables from the old Monterey Whaling Company and the chairs from a pair of Las Vegas hotels. The mauve-and-teal decor itself seems a bit of a castoff, from the Southwestern style that passed through a fashionable phase a couple of years back. Although far from grand, the place is unquestionably comfortable, and the only dining room furnishing that seems out of place is the refrigerated case that displays cheesecakes and the vegetable preparations that contribute to the antipasto plate.

Should the management ever decide to banish this display case, it might do well also to banish the vegetable antipasti , too, the only disagreeable items discovered on a pair of visits. As opposed to the lush, roasted peppers, marinated eggplant and pucker-provoking giardinera offered by most Italian restaurants, these tended to be half-raw and decidedly bland. The usual cold cuts and cheese filled out the plate.

Otherwise, the menu seemed to bounce from high spot to high spot, always taking the food relative to the price, which often is as low as at modest neighborhood spots. This menu runs to a number of pages and devotes much space to specials prepared on specific days, such as the cabbage and pasta soup offered on Tuesdays and the roast quail and beef stewed in Chianti featured Sundays. (The listings are not followed religiously, and other specials are likely to be substituted.)

A Sunday’s minestrone soup verged on the remarkable. Served in a low but broad glass dish, the finely herbed, lightly tomatoed broth acted as a repository for a collection of beens, vegetables, potato chunks and macaroni, nicely blended for a deeper flavor than one usually assigns to vegetable soup. A Caesar salad, quite generous at the price, started with good, crisp Romaine and included freshly made croutons and an acceptable dressing. An appetizer of sauteed shrimp expanded on the local “shrimp scampi” theme by enrobing the crustaceans in a creamy sauce flavored with lemon and peppery Italian parsley as well as garlic.

The standing seafood list at present is unreliable, but a few choices have been available, including the red snapper Portofino (baked with Chianti, tomato, lemon, capers and basil, an unusual quintet), and the braciole di pescespada , or swordfish stuffed Sicilian-style with bread crumbs, chopped olives and capers. Neither were sampled, but both sound very good.

Again in the Sicilian mood, Parreno’s offers a handsome bistecche alla Siciliana , a large New York strip first dipped in olive oil and then seared to give an excellent crust that seals in the juices. The fine, light sauce--more a garnish spread over the top, really--is a grand mix of sharp flavors and includes capers, chopped olives, garlic, sweet peppers and just a bit of tomato. This and all entrees are served with spaghetti aglio ed olio , or tossed simply with oil, garlic and minced parsley; the vegetables, well-cooked or otherwise, that have become standard plate accessories in San Diego are not to be found.

Olives, basil and tomato team in the garnish for the vitello con melanzane , or thin, carefully cooked veal scallops paired with equally thin, crisply finished slices of eggplant. This is an excellent, less-typical play on the veal scaloppine theme; other slightly unusual choices include the scaloppine with basil and the saltimbocca Salira, which adds mushrooms and cheese to the usual garnish of prosciutto and Marsala-enriched pan sauce.

The menu also pays better-than-average attention to chicken and offers a simple but delicious pollo alla Toscana that spreads the sauteed breast with a wonderfully flavored sauce of mushrooms, leeks, tomato and rosemary.

Relatively less interesting, the pasta pages list spaghettini with a choice of meatballs, fresh tomato sauce or meat sauce; fettuccine primavera or Alfredo; lasagna; linguine in clam sauce and a similar if less-typical linguine with squid. The cannelloni, however, have two special virtues, an exceptionally light, finely minced filling of veal, chicken and spinach, and a wrapping of delicate crepes (the correct approach) rather than heavy pasta tubes.

The choice of homemade desserts runs to precisely one item, but a good one, crisp cannoli so generously stuffed with sweetened ricotta cheese that they burst at either end.

* Parreno’s

4263 Taylor St., Old Town

296-7940

Lunch and dinner daily

Entrees $5.95 to $13.95. Dinner for

two, including a glass of wine each, tax

and tip, about $30 to $50

Credit cards accepted