RESTAURANT REVIEW : Il Balcone Makes the Great Pasta Debate Irresolvable

And the great pasta debate rages on.

It rages on in my car, for instance. En route to Il Balcone, a friend and I argue the merits of fresh versus dried pasta; she claims there is no substitute for fresh, I claim freshness is vastly overrated. Dried pasta in saintly hands, I say, can move mountains.

Now, one might actually expect a restaurant that looks down on a Rolls-Royce dealership (in this case, Terry York Imports in Encino) to consider dried pasta beneath its dignity; after all, these days everybody makes fresh pasta. But Il Balcone is anything but a Rolls-Royce sort of place.

Just look at its forlorn balcony, marked by three lonely San Pellegrino umbrellas (the balcony is deserted in winter, but you can use it as a landmark to help spot this little place). Look at the bright, cramped dining room, stuck in a second-story corner of a drab mini-mall. It couldn’t be more basic: crowded rows of glass-topped tables, no-nonsense straight-backed chairs. Most of the color comes from prints of coastal Italy and a team of waiters clad in plain white T-shirts.

And there is no question that this restaurant serves a few dried pastas. The kitchen is completely open to view, and you can see powder-blue boxes of Di Checco brand pasta piled high in a rear stockroom.

Before you get to these pasta creations, though, there are a small number of salads, soups and pizzas to deal with. Owners Salvatore Caredda and Paolo Equinozio are from the island of Sardinia, which has its own ancient food traditions, but they make pizzas that merit a 10 on the trendoid scale--hand-kneaded, cracker-thin crusts with toppings two inches high.

The pizza Margherita is a bow to the simple life, a ruddy round of tomato, mozzarella and chopped basil. But the pizza quattro formaggi has to be the most complicated version I’ve ever seen. Instead of the usual gooey white mass of mixed cheeses, you get four discrete gooey white masses: mozzarella, Fontina, provolone and Parmesan. Fortunately, it tastes a lot better than it looks, and they even throw in a few globs of goat cheese.

The stracciatella alla Romana just knocks your socks off; it may be the best dish here. Call it egg drop soup, Italian-style--a simple chicken broth enriched with spinach, beaten egg and Parmesan. The salads tend to be simple too, but plainly unexciting. Peperoni arrosti is a nice salty plate of roasted bell pepper, sliced tomato and whole anchovy, the sort of thing to match with an ice-cold beer. Antipasto misto works out to be green salad with a couple of artichoke hearts, rolled up slices of ham and salami rounds. If you’re planning on ordering pasta, I’d just stick with the green salad that’s included.

On to the pastas, which pretty much constitute the rest of the menu (meat entrees are only available on special, but they can be very good; I’ve had a generously sauced osso buco milanese with meat so tender it was falling apart). Spaghetti alla pomodoro is a thick noodle with a smooth tomato sauce, flavored with basil and garlic. Spaghettini alla checca is first cousin to pizza Margherita, thin spaghetti supporting a Margherita-like topping of fresh chopped tomato and basil. Ask the kitchen to make you a checca with extra garlic, as I did, and you’ll experience one of the Valley’s best spaghettis, fresh or dried.

Maybe you’ve guessed that those two are made from boxed noodles. I swear you’d never know. Fettuccine porcini is a different matter. Ours comes up on the slippery side, as if all the gluten has been washed out. That dubious trick is hard to perform when pasta is fresh (it is that squeaky quality of fresh gluten that most people like about handmade pasta), and it doesn’t help that the dish is embellished with a skimpy portion of dried mushrooms.

That dish, in fact, gives my friend a reason to gloat. She has ordered ravioli burro e salvia and is devouring it with gusto. These generous pasta pillows are stuffed with spinach and ricotta and come in the perfect amount of sage butter sauce. I have to admit they are delightful, and it turns out that they are handmade.

So the great pasta debate rages on, through our good, milky cappuccinos, our creamy house tiramisu and our oddball tarte tatin, good caramelized apples atop one more cracker-thin crust. Say, what’s a homemade French dessert like this doing in a corner pasta place anyway?

Harrumph. Next thing you know, they’ll be making all their noodles fresh.

Suggested dishes: stracciatella alla Romana, $3.50; pizza Margherita, $6.75/$8.95; spaghettini alla checca, $7.25; ravioli burro e salvia, $8.50.

Il Balcone, 15826 Ventura Blvd., Encino, (818) 788-9068. Lunch 11 a.m. to 2:15 p.m. Monday through Friday; dinner 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Friday and 5:30 p.m. to 10 p.m. Saturdays. Closed Sunday. Parking lot. Beer and wine only. MasterCard and Visa accepted. Dinner for two, $20 to $30.