Italian-California Fare Satisfies at Lader’s Too

La Mesa restaurateur Jay Lader has brought not just a menu but a unique decor motif to his new North County location.

Lader’s in La Mesa is an amiable, neighborhood-style place, Italian despite the German-sounding name and good for pizzas and a wide range of pastas. The new North County outpost, on the border between Rancho Santa Fe and Encinitas, occupies a shopping center space that has housed a couple of short-lived eateries in the past few years, most recently a place called Shells.

Lader’s Too, which bills itself as specializing in an altogether new hybrid, “Italian-California cuisine,” retains Shells’ low-key, easygoing, comfortable decor more or less intact, but has added Lader’s trademark touch: Boxes and boxes of pasta are arranged at focal points. This makes for a lot of macaroni on the horizon, but, if this scheme is only marginally attractive, it does make a point. Virtually every dish involves pasta to a greater or lesser degree, and often happily.

The first courses alone omit starch as a prime ingredient. Choices here range from the “cheesy” garlic bread (Lader’s own term for the offering) to a rather vainly named carpaccio of salmon, vain in the sense that it utilizes smoked salmon rather than raw, and given the garnish of Mascarpone cheese, capers and raw onion amounts more to an Italianate lox and bagel plate than a real carpaccio.

Also among first courses, Lader’s Too offers a handsome plate of roasted peppers dressed with capers and anchovies, a grilled seafood antipasto plate and a dish simply described as “fried eggplant” that is a light, handsome variation on eggplant parmigiana and makes quite a satisfactory opener. Since the serving is large, it can be shared by two or even three diners. Other choices include an herbed cream of wild mushroom soup and, inevitably these days, a Caesar salad.

The need for a starter is in any case determined by appetite, since entree portions are in most cases more than generous, and a sizable house salad precedes the entree. This salad, if well-arranged, can have a watery flavor that defeats the strongly garlicky house dressing, and the croutons, if home-made, also are deep fried, a process that renders them more greasy and heavy than crisp.

The menu never really clarifies why the restaurant describes itself as “Italian-California” in style, since “California cuisine” implies a certain lightness and inventiveness that is not particularly on display here. Certain icons of California cuisine, such as sun-dried tomatoes, turn up occasionally, as in the sun-dried tomatoes that garnish the saute of artichokes, sausage and red bell peppers served over linguine.

Other somewhat unusual offerings would be the fettuccine dressed with smoked salmon, onion, vodka, capers and dilled cream sauce, and the chicken breast stuffed with bay shrimp. But otherwise, there are plenty of standard local Italian favorites, include veal Marsala and parmigiana, eggplant parmigiana, spaghetti carbonara, manicotti and lasagna.

Lader’s follows standard practice by accompanying those entrees not served over pasta with a side dish of pasta, but interestingly varies the practice by tossing the noodles in the same sauce as the main item. Thus the macaroni that joins the chicken with shrimp is coated with the same lobster sauce as the fowl, and the spaghetti offered with the veal piccata similarly is tossed not in the tomato sauce that would be expected elsewhere, but in a buttery wine sauce laden with piquant capers. This is a nice idea, and novel hereabouts. The veal piccata, of course, is not at all a novel offering, and, although Lader’s Too does an acceptable job with this dish of sauteed veal scaloppine, it does not offer a preparation of exceptional character.

A smoky flavor marred an otherwise attractive specialty, the lobster fettuccine, which the menu describes as noodles dressed with sauteed “slipper tail” lobster meat with shallots, basil and Sherry in a creamed lobster sauce. The lobster tasted grilled instead, and this strong flavor worked against the cream.

The page of more traditional pasta choices includes ravioli; linguine amatriciana (in a pungent, spicy tomato sauce with Italian bacon and sage); angel hair tossed simply with tomatoes and basil; a rather interesting and nice-sounding dish of penne macaroni with brown sauce, Marsala and porcini mushrooms, and plain old spaghetti in marinara sauce. In this last instance, the pasta and sauce are good, but the optional meatballs available on the side are immense and dense rather than delicate and delicious.

Lader’s Too

162 Rancho Santa Fe Road, Encinitas Calls: 633-1992

Hours: Lunch Tuesday-Friday, Dinner Tuesday-Sunday, closed Monday

Cost: Pastas and entrees $8.95 to $14.95; dinner for two, including a glass of wine each, tax and tip, about $30 to $65.