Geez, Louise’s Trattoria Serves Up the Bland, Unimaginative

The Italian restaurant genre has a seemingly endless number of incarnations. Just when you think you’ve seen the last, along comes another one to redefine the concept.

The original idea behind Louise’s Trattoria was simple: It was intended to be a chain of neighborhood bistros serving freshly made, straightforward California-Italian dishes at good prices. Two smaller branches--in the Hancock Park and Brentwood sections of Los Angeles--do just that.

But as in any successful chain, as the locations multiply, the original intentions can become obscured. And although the new Huntington Beach Louise’s retains many of the popular attributes of the others--including portions large enough to choke the healthier sort of horse--this is anything but a neighborhood restaurant.

This first Orange County venture for the chain is in the swank new Pierside Pavilion on Pacific Coast Highway, where it occupies the better part of the second floor. You can sit inside near the open kitchen if you like, but most people prefer the open-air balcony, which affords an unobstructed view clear to Catalina. Apart from the earth tones and pastels, about the only design aspect worth mentioning about the interior is the upholstery of the booths, a fabric with a pattern lifted from a painting by Paul Klee.

That’s as close as you’ll get to surrealism in this place. Because the food here, except for salads and desserts, is generally bland and unimaginative.

Fortunately, salads and desserts are the first foods you see when you enter, nicely laid out in a glass case by the door. The salads--light, al fresco dishes popular with the beach set--have such names as “Sichuan noodle and farfalle with goat cheese,” and they sit on enormous deli platters. Desserts such as Almond Roca cake and lemon hazelnut torte are the handiwork of Pasadena pastry maven Amy Pressman, late of Spago and Pasadena’s Parkway Grill. Pressman’s pastries are the most imaginative things served in this restaurant. It’s just a shame you have to wait until dessert to eat them.

The best salad I tasted was the mixed baby lettuces. It comes in an enormous mound--obscenely large, really--covered with what looks like an entire bag of chopped walnuts. Underneath, however, you find pungent Gorgonzola and deliciously fresh greens in a balsamic vinaigrette as finely made as any I’ve had recently. And the garnish is four or five fresh yellow cherry tomatoes, riper and juicier than most around.

The barbecue chicken chop is served in an even bigger mound than the lettuces. The main lettuce in this one is iceberg, and the salad is rich with frizzled onion and lots of saucy chopped chicken. Call it a chopped salad extraordinaire. Two of us managed less than a third of it.

There are lots of pizzas, natch, and they come in two contrasting styles: Louise’s original, referred to as traditional Neapolitan with a medium-thin crust, and California-style with an even lighter crust. This is where I feel I have a right to grumble.

Both these pizzas in fact have a thick, doughy crust. Louise’s cheeseless vegetarian (original) is a veritable Mt. Everest on the pizzascape, piled high with Japanese eggplant, Roma tomatoes, broccoli, sun-dried tomatoes, fresh herbs and mushrooms. Spicy chicken sausage (California) must have a pound of cumin-infused chicken sausage, overwhelming everything else on it. Unless you are planning to chop down a few trees, you’d better stick to pizza by the slice, which you can custom-order with your choice of toppings.

The restaurant is proud of the fact that all the pastas (except farfalle, the bow-tie pasta) are made fresh daily. What the menu neglects to tell you is that the way a pasta is prepared is still the most important factor in how it tastes.

The pastas here are mushy, overloaded with sauce and not distinctive. Cheese ravioli could be delicious but isn’t--just green noodle pockets with a good ricotta, Romano and Parmesan filling, smothered in a neutral marinara sauce and practically welded to the plate. To call them overcooked would be an understatement. Linguine carbonara, a brunch item, is even less appealing. It comes drenched in an excessively rich sauce with bits of bacon and cheese, a bland and one-dimensional dish. Try the spaghetti aglio e olio instead. If you’re in luck, the garlic won’t have been smoked to bitterness.

I have no gripe with the entrees, which are mostly variations on the chicken theme. I’d even call the rosemary chicken a treat--a roasted half chicken smothered with a rich, heavily herbed sauce. Lighter eaters might prefer the chicken sesame, which is pretty much the chicken piccata idea, apart from the fact that the chicken is cut in medallion form, too large to qualify for piccata status. The light sesame breading is tasty, and the buttery lemon sauce is almost subtle. I much prefer these to the oily chicken Parmigiana, and the too-sweet chicken Marsala.

Now, more about those desserts of Pressman’s. Topping my list would be Louise’s chocolate cake, in which a little bit of cake barely separates four layers of dark Belgian chocolate fudge frosting. It’s a chocolate-lover’s fantasy. The double-thick walnut brownie is no slouch either, intense and rich with whole walnuts mingling throughout.

But there are several more good desserts, among them a raft of chewy cookies; one of the best, creamiest cheesecakes available in Orange County, and that Almond Roca cake, a torte-like structure with pieces of a Almond Roca-like confection mixed in. This all proves that even excess can have its merits, when handled by someone who understands it.

Louise’s Trattoria is very reasonably priced. Salads are $3.50 to $7.95. Pizzas are $6.95 to $16.50. Pastas are $5.95 to $8.95. Entrees are $7.50 to $12.95. Desserts are $1 to $4.95.

* LOUISE’S TRATTORIA

* 300 Pacific Coast Highway, Huntington Beach.

* (714) 960-0996.

* Open Sunday through Thursday, 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.; Friday and Saturday till midnight.

* MasterCard and Visa accepted.