MORE GUYS FROM ITALY : Two Restaurants From Near and Far, Bearing Olive Oil, Carbohydrates-- and Tiramisu

They know what we want: wood ovens, olive oil and carbohydrates in myriad forms. We keep on going to Italian restaurants, and they keep on coming to us. Two of the latest literally came from out of town: Trilussa from Rome and Pane e Vino from Santa Barbara.

Trilussa, where people used to dine on crepes when the place was a Magic Pan, now throngs with diners who look as if they’ve just blown a wad of lire on Rodeo Drive. Maybe they heard about the place back in Rome at Domino and Cicacica, Trilussa’s sister restaurants. (Trilussa’s chef, Antonio Mancuso, was at Il Giardino until recently).

The menu is divided into sections for pizza, pasta, focaccia and bruschetta, and as soon as you sit down, you get plenty of good, chewy bread. The appetizers and meat dishes are almost lost in the crowd of carbohydrates.

True, you can get a standard-issue antipasto plate--sausages, peppers, lumps of mozzarella, grilled zucchini and eggplant slices, a whole artichoke that has had the choke pulled out somewhat randomly--or you can order crisp, fried zucchini blossoms with a hint of anchovy inside, but why bother? Why not call for a bruschetta or two, loaded down with fresh tomato chunks and basil or a mixture of tuna and arugula?

For an appetizer you can’t beat the pizza rughetta e mais. The thin crust is baked with no topping but some mozzarella, and when it comes out of the oven, raw arugula and corn kernels are sprinkled over it, a remarkably light and refreshing idea.

Most of the usual pizza suspects are available, such as margherita , quattro formaggi and rustica , plus an unusual pizza Ciclope, on which a single Cyclops eye--a raw egg--stares up at you from the prosciutto, cheese and mushrooms. Pizza capricciosa is an idle elaboration: prosciutto, mushrooms, artichoke hearts, quartered eggs and olives (California olives, I regret to say, not the pungent Italian sort).

The pastas are all excellent, but the fettuccine al funghi porcini towers over them--and over just about any other porcini dish in these parts. The delicate fettuccine, rolled thinner than usual, comes in a cream sauce filled with richly flavored mushrooms and occasional chunks of caramelized garlic.

The lasagna may not be photogenic--it looks like a thick smear on the plate--but it’s unusually light and rich. Apparently, cream with a bit of sweet, fresh tomato paste has been substituted for the usual cheese and tomato sauce. Trilussa uses an extra-rich cream for many sauces, as with the penne al salmone , where it’s a foil for strong smoked salmon.

The meat dishes, mostly chicken, occupy a mere half page on this six-page menu. Petti di pollo al Cognac is chicken breasts in a rich cream sauce slightly flavored with brandy. Pollo alla Romana (available at lunch) lacks the watery quality that spoils so many chicken stews. The tomato sauce has been cooked down to an appetizing glaze on the chicken.

The only really unusual meat entree is straccetti alla rughetta , carpaccio-thin sheets of beef fried brown and served with arugula leaves in a sort of lemon vinaigrette. It’s kind of hard to justify spending $15.75 on a small plate of this stuff, but maybe you’ve got to try it once.

Cream resurfaces in the tiramisu , a particularly light and fresh-tasting model. I’ve had an unimpressive, eggy creme brulee and a good cream puff with grainy chocolate sauce, but most desserts are based on fritters--thin sheets of a rich dough fried quite brown. In tubular form, they’re cannoli , with chocolate and maraschino cherries in the ricotta filling; fried in little canoe shapes and filled with ricotta and sliced berries, they’re torte di casa . Sometimes the waiters just bring a plate of them, heavily sprinkled with powdered sugar (just in case, don’t wear dark clothes).

Trilussa, 9601 Brighton Way, Beverly Hills; (310) 859-0067. Open daily for lunch and dinner. Full bar. Valet parking. All major credit cards. Dinner for two, food only, $32-$70.

Pane e Vino has a gorgeous Italian look--grandiose ochre murals on the walls, a very pleasant garden patio--but it shows its Santa Barbara heritage with an appetizer of shrimp with crumbled feta cheese that tastes rather more of Greece than Italy; the lime-and-mint vinaigrette scarcely wanders at all from California. The one really unwelcome bit of eclecticism is the smoked salmon filling in the timballo di melanzane, which does not at all seem at home with grilled eggplant, goat cheese and tomato sauce.

But you’ve got to love a vitello tonnato that does without either capers or anchovies. Its secret is lemon and whole-seed mustard in the sauce of tuna, meat juices and mayonnaise. P&V; makes a mean stuffed artichoke heart, too, with a powerful garlic-and-bread-crumb stuffing and a heavy load of chopped tomatoes.

The menu features rather more meats than Trilussa’s, confirmed by the presence of a rotisserie as well as a grill and a wood oven. The grilled and rotisseried meats are served with crisp green beans and roasted new potatoes, and they include a huge veal chop ( lombata di vitello ), a huge rib-eye steak ( bistecca alla fiorentina ) and some tender lamb chops.

In the wood oven, meat is roasted in casseroles (“in clay,” as the menu puts it). A tiny chicken comes out surprisingly savory, roasted with rosemary, lemon and bacon. Oddly, the dish of vegetables in clay was shockingly underdone; when a tomato hasn’t had time to turn soft, you’re looking at carrots and a head of garlic that are a bit tougher than al dente.

Only four pizzas are listed, but they do have nice thin crusts, a little puffier at the edges than Trilussa’s, and the olives are the proper Italian kind. Schiacciata , a non-puffy cousin of calzone, is a pleasant novelty with a decidedly Northern Italian filling of Gorgonzola, arugula and speck (ham).

This kitchen falls down a bit in the pasta department, however. Penne alla boscaiola wastes porcini mushrooms by burying their flavor in tomato sauce, pancetta and cream; the flavor of a porcini risotto didn’t knock me out, either, and its texture was rather sticky. Bucatini all’amatriciana is a good and distinctive version, though, with lots of translucent fried onions sweetening the slightly peppery tomato-and-pancetta sauce.

The dessert list has some almond cookies for dipping in sweet vin santo , and a creme caramel with a particularly luscious, soft texture and much too much vanilla flavor. The rest of the desserts are pretty bland: a tiramisu without any espresso, a coupe of white chocolate ice cream and whipped cream (a little espresso in the bottom of that one), berries and cream.

How much longer can this rage for Italian food go on? To judge from how it’s been surviving in Italy, a couple of centuries more, at least.

Pane e Vino, 8265 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles; (213) 651-4600. Open nightly for dinner, for lunch Monday through Saturday. Full bar. Valet parking in rear. American Express, MasterCard and Visa. Dinner for two, food only, $32-$63.

Food stylist: Norman Stewart; silverware courtesy of Pavillon Christofle