Newport’s Villa Nova Has the Feel of the 1930s Down Pat

“V ooooooooo-lare ,/ Oh, oh . . . .”

Ah, the romance of a rustic Italian dinner in a dark piano bar, with a harbor view to distract those who aren’t into Damone, Sinatra or Billy Joel.

We are at Villa Nova, a local institution now in its 58th year. Actor/director Allen Dale--born Alfred DiLisio in the Italian province of Abruzzi--established the restaurant on the Sunset Strip back in 1933 and then relocated it, along with his family, to Newport Beach in 1967. Dale himself is no longer with us, but his wife, Charlotte, and son Jim carry on the traditions today, imparting a continuity with the past that you just don’t find in many restaurants today.

Stepping into this beachfront roadhouse, with its facade representing an Italian villa and its dark, clubby airs, is almost like stepping back into the ‘30s. The outside walls are painted with distinctive fresco-style murals and the building is studded with small archways and protuberances. The main dining room houses a piano bar, a low-ceilinged, dimly lit space dominated by semicircular booths upholstered in gaudy red leather.

You’ve been to a place like this before. The well-dressed crowd is slightly exuberant--it looks as if it finds itself eating and drinking a little more than it planned. The captains and waiters, clad in stiff tuxedos, don’t seem to mind one bit. They’re throwbacks to the halcyon days of celebrity restaurants on the Strip who perform their duties with a smile. It’s only when the lounge lizard at the piano breaks into another round of Marvin Hamlisch that you are transported, measure for measure, back to the future: “Memories . . . light the corners of my mind.”

The menu probably won’t bring you back, though. It’s one of those comprehensive Italian menus we grew up with, filled with appetizers that could feed a small army, pastas drenched in rich sauces and the usual quota of gargantuan chicken, shrimp and veal dishes. If you are thinking about small portions and light northern Italian cooking, fuhgeddaboudit. The food here is tasty, heavy-handed peasanty fare that stays with you. Don’t say you haven’t been warned.

Actually, you’ll know about what you are in for when you slide into your booth. The table is laden with the fat kind of bread sticks--the size of 10-cent cigars--that were the only kind of bread sticks Americans knew before we encountered slender, freshly baked grissini, and there is plenty of Bertolli’s Extra Virgin olive oil on hand, sans designer bottle or fresh herbal infusions, to sprinkle on the salads and pastas.

It is possible to get a light start here, but you have to stretch to find one. Carpaccio con grana, one of the menu’s few concessions to modern times, consists of thin slices of good raw beef garnished with tiny slivers of grana cheese, a few capers and just a kiss of olive oil. I would have preferred more of the garnishes, but in the context of what you are likely to get next, the minimalism makes sense.

Bar dishes, such as thickly battered zucchini and calamari, make good snacks but tend to weigh you down before you get started. Great, primally satisfying scampi, dressed in butter and garlic, can be had as an appetizer or main course. Stracciatella con spinaci, a sort of chicken-based egg drop soup with abundant spinach, is wonderfully light. Villa Nova serves it in a silver tureen which can be shared among as many as three.

I tried pasta e fagioli, the classic pasta and bean soup, only to discover that the pasta was missing. The captain looked befuddled and then returned with a dish of pastina, that pasta shaped like tiny stars. “The pasta isn’t in the soup because I forgot to put it there,” he said, and then he promptly began spooning the stuff into my soup. You don’t get that kind of down-home treatment in the trendy places.

And these pastas are down-home, that’s for sure. How else could you explain a dish such as mushroom and chicken liver trifolate, which consists of doughy pasta shells smothered in mushrooms, whole chicken livers, garlic, tomatoes and white wine? The dish is delicious, but you’d need the appetite of a longshoreman to take on a plate of veal after this.

Paglia e fieno is a dish much lighter in spirit, but that doesn’t seem to make much of a difference. The name, which literally means “straw and hay,” implies lightness, and the green and white strands of pasta intertwine almost poetically when the dish is done perfectly. Villa Nova, however, serves its spinach and egg fettuccine clumped together, groaning under the weight of a ponderous cream sauce enriched with prosciutto, peas and Parmesan.

In comparison, the house tomato sauce is positively subtle, a full-bodied sauce nicely perfumed with basil and oregano. Meatballs and sausages, incidentally, are first rate here. That means old standbys such as marinara or Bolognese sauce come out well, and heartier pastas such as mostaccioli or rigatoni, which are generally used as foils for these ingredients.

At any rate, if the 21 listed pastas don’t tickle your fancy, chef Sonny Mergenthaler will customize one for you. That goes for entrees, too. A member of our group wanted chicken grilled with garlic, rosemary and olive oil, as opposed to the heavily sauced chicken dishes on the menu, and the kitchen complied nicely.

Most of the meat dishes ( secondi piatti ) are heavily sauced, so batten down the hatches. Braciole cacciatora and osso buco are typical. The braciole is a veal roll with a dense sausage stuffing, blanketed with sauteed vegetables, and osso buco a rich baked veal shank brimming with marrow. Paradoxically, agnello con rosmarino, a plate of lamb T-bone chops sprinkled with rosemary and smothered in rich butter sauce, comes with a most contemporary side dish. The chops are balanced by good, pappardelle --broad, flat noodles lightly brushed with butter and garlic.

Dessert is pretty much an indulgence here, things like flavored cheesecakes, a serviceable tiramisu and a few commercial Italian ice creams. But there is one surprise, the confection of whipped egg yolk and Marsala known as zabaglione. This zabaglione, made to order and served warm, is nearly perfect: coddled, sweet and properly frothy. A frightful rendition of “O Sole Mio,” rasped by a customer just as this dessert was being served, didn’t even spoil the effect.

Villa Nova is expensive. Antipasti are $4.75 to $9.75. Pastas are $9.25 to $26.50. Secondi piatti are $13.75 to $25.

* VILLA NOVA

* 3131 W. Coast Highway, Newport Beach.

* (714) 642-7880.

* Dinner 5 p.m. through 1 a.m. nightly.

* All major cards accepted.