RESTAURANT REVIEW : Amore’s Good Food Deserves a Better Fate

“I don’t see how these places stay open,” one of my guests remarksas she scans the empty tables in Tarzana’s Ristorante Amore & Bar.

It must be amore. It’s a very slow Wednesday evening, and anyone can see that this restaurant richly deserves a better fate.

The dining room is a beauty, in fact, embellished as it is by designer furniture and a stunning stone floor. The richly stained wooden tables, leather-backed chairs and teal banquettes harmonize with stern grace, and all this airy space would be a drawing card in Milan or New York.

In those cities, Amore’s long, sleek bar would probably be lined with the hip and the restless. Tonight, it’s home to about six downcast-looking employees, waiting for a crowd that never materializes.

We aren’t seated a minute when Anna La Cerva, who runs this restaurant along with two of her five sons, comes over and greets us warmly. La Cerva is a native of Palermo, Sicily, and manages a smile when we ask where the customers are.

“We’ve only been open a couple of months,” she says, “and we know the people are going to come.” La Cerva has owned restaurants in places as diverse as Riverhead, N. Y., and suburban San Diego, so she should know. Besides, with good food like this, she has a right to be optimistic.

The brushetta , for example (that’s how the menu spells it; “brooshetta” seems to be the Sicilian pronunciation of the ubiquitous bruschetta , pronounced “broosketta”). It’s about the best I’ve tasted anywhere. The menu calls it “crispy bread with chopped tomatoes, olive oil, basil and garlic,” cleverly disguising the fact that it’s virtually a trendy pizza, a cracker-thin round of dough loaded with fragrant chunks of tomato and lightly frizzled basil. P. S.: It’s also a known fact that Sicilians aren’t shy when it comes to their garlic.

The next surprise is the house antipasto misto. The menu modestly describes this one as a variety of small appetizers, and veterans of the Italian restaurant wars are apt to envision another variation on the pickles-and-cold cuts theme.

Not here. This is a big, colorful palette of delicacies from all over Italy: dried black olives from the north; big, meaty green olives from the south; arancine (deep-fried rice balls made with peas and ground meat--and the one truly Sicilian entry on this plate); a pile of grilled vegetables; a fat, steaming potato croquette, and pieces of exquisitely milky bufala mozzarella, nesting on more of those good tomatoes and diaphanously thin slices of smoky prosciutto.

Pastas tend toward richness here (maybe that’s why business is slow; Thin’s Inn, right next door, draws a big crowd, so maybe this is just a diet-oriented neighborhood). I just love the tagliatelle Anna, thin noodles in a rich meat ragu with the inspired addition of snow peas and the even richer pappardelle fantasia. These are the wide flat noodles that Westside places love to serve with duck, and Amore gives you a bowlful of them, almost smothered by a sauce containing ground sausage meat and pancetta.

Dishes like lasagna pollo , riso amore and the exotic sounding farfalle natascia demonstrate this kitchen’s independent spirit. Of the three, riso amore succeeds best. It’s essentially a risotto full of can’t-miss ingredients like shrimp, garlic, red wine, parsley and fresh tomato splendidly prepared.

The menu calls farfalle natascia a butterfly pasta with smoked salmon, caviar and a splash of vodka. I prefer to call it a bow-tie pasta with smoked salmon, hardly any caviar and too much vodka. As for the lasagna, well, it feels like an experiment. Chef Giuseppe makes it with chicken, wild mushrooms, goat cheese and plenty of spinach, and I, for one, find all the flavors a bit daunting.

Beside the pastas, there is a small selection of secondi piatti for meat lovers. Pollo arrosto is supposed to be roasted chicken with rosemary potatoes, but isn’t. Amore serves it in a big plate of chunky marinara sauce, making it halfway to cacciatore. My friend’s wife had to scrape off the sauce to eat it. If it’s sauce you’re after, try vitello Milanese Amore instead, made with veal and Fontina cheese. It’s delicious, but you’d better look for a Stair Master after a plate of this stuff.

The desserts are simple, things like homemade tiramisu or affogato caffe (vanilla ice cream with hot espresso poured over it). If you’re lucky, there will be a luscious crema caramella (creme caramel) with a dark outer skin, or good homemade cannoli , little boats of crust with a sweet ricotta filling.

Let’s hope that this winning new place gets lucky, too.

Suggested dishes: brushetta, $5.95; antipasto misto, $9.95; pappardelle fantasia, $9.95; vitello Milanese Amore, $15.95.

Ristorante Amore and Bar, 18716 Ventura Blvd., Tarzana, (818) 343-8005. Lunch 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays; dinner 5:30 to 10 p.m. Sundays through Thursdays, 5:30 p.m. to midnight Fridays and Saturdays. Full bar. Parking lot. All major cards. Dinner for two, $25 to $40.