Tripping With the Tongue From Italian to Persian

Another week spent meandering around to small restaurants has yielded the usual results. Cuisine-hopping can be fun, and a money-saver too.

Several years ago I discovered a Baldwin Park restaurant called Rosa’s, a bastion of old-fashioned, red-sauce Italian food making a successful adjustment to the demands of ‘80s palates. Neapolitan Vincenzo Ricci was one of the chefs. Today you will find him in Pasta Grotto, a small, family-style restaurant in Seal Beach that he runs with his wife, Antoinetta.

Pasta Grotto has been open less than a year, but to my mind it is already one of the county’s best small Italian restaurants. Don’t be put off by the artificial-rock walls, the kitschy fountain centerpiece or the humdrum glass-topped tables. This is a serious kitchen, and Ricci is a highly accomplished chef.

The appetizers will erase any doubts you might have had looking in through the window. His carpaccio is simply the equal of any I can think of--raw filet mignon sliced razor-thin, sprinkled with olive oil, lemon juice, tiny chunks of imported Parmesan, capers and minced fresh garlic. The insalata di pomodoro is equally artful. Ricci tops five or six rounds of ripe tomato with finely shredded Bermuda onion and more of that fresh garlic. Bravissima.

Pastas are made fresh daily, save penne and linguine (Ricci uses Di Checco brand dried pastas). There are ravioli porcini filled with spinach and ricotta cheese in a rich cream sauce flavored with porcini mushrooms; and a good vegetarian lasagna, oozing mozzarella. Among the dry noodles, Ricci makes one of the best versions around of linguine puttanesca , rich with olives, capers, anchovies and tomato sauce.

Be sure to save room for Ricci’s good entrees. Being from Naples, he treats seafood with special reverence. Sand dabs, a rarity in Orange County’s Italian restaurants, come sauteed in light batter with lemon, capers and melted butter. There’s a sumptuous shellfish cioppino with a tomato-based broth and great, garlicky scampi. Osso buco, not on the menu but usually available, is a meat-eater’s must. This Italian peasant standby of braised veal shank never comes any better, fall-off-the-bone tender and flavorful in an aromatic tomato sauce.

An added bonus are the soups and salads that come with all entrees and pastas. Pay the difference between the house salad ($3) and, say, the insalata di pomodoro ($3.50), and you get to order a starter off the menu. Soups such as pasta e fagioli are terrific, and you’ll also want to sample pepper insalata , in which roasted peppers are mixed with capers, anchovies and virgin olive oil. More magic from Naples.

End a meal with homemade gelati from a woman named Celeste out of Manhattan Beach. Her fruit and nut rich spumoni is (forgive me) positively celestial.

Pasta Grotto is moderately priced. Appetizers are $4.95 to $6.95. Pastas are $6.95 to $10.95. Entrees are $9.95 to $12.95.

You wouldn’t call Orchid, a mini-mall Persian cafe with a maxi-sized menu, a thoroughly accomplished restaurant. For one thing, it lacks any kind of real atmosphere--at first sight it could be serving just about any type of food. For another, its kitchen, though solid, just doesn’t cover anything like the range of Persian cuisine.

Perhaps I’m selling Orchid short. I’m just coming off a home-cooked Persian dinner that completely changed my perceptions about this artful, maddeningly subtle style of eating, and this may have made me hypercritical.

Persian cooking combines vegetables, herbs, spices, meats and--above all--fruits with more finesse than perhaps any other. The catch is that this level of cooking, it seems, has to be done slowly and deliberately--at home essentially, because restaurants have costs to consider. They can’t be expected to grate dill, soak lima beans, blanch walnuts and puree pomegranate seeds--just a few of the ingredients vital to the Persian kitchen--for dishes to be sold for under $10.

Orchid does attempt to get beyond the usual Persian kebab menu. There are special dishes (two a day from a long list in the kitchen’s repertoire) that certainly employ time-consuming ingredients and procedures, but the recipes are obviously not followed as they would be at someone’s home.

For instance, the fesenjan , which is chicken stewed with pomegranate juice and pureed walnuts: Orchid’s version comes blanketed in the requisite red-purple sauce, but it doesn’t bring out the flavors of the ingredients with much success. Baghali polo is a green pilaf, traditionally served alongside seasoned lamb shanks, that is flavored with lima beans and dill weed. Here the rice is a bit dry, and the natural scent of the dill is muted.

What you can count on at Orchid are the grilled meats. Before you get to that point, though, have some of Orchid’s refreshing yogurt dishes, which also help digestion: mast-o-mosir , in which the yogurt is mixed with minced shallot, and mast-o-khiyar , which includes chopped cucumber and mint.

Adventurous palates should try torshi, a complement to the squares of hot pita bread found on every table. Torshi are pickled vegetables--mostly carrots, cauliflower and eggplant in this case--that are aged in aggressively strong vinegar. They are sharply appetizing but not for the faint of heart.

Those grilled meats are skillfully marinated--and huge. Soltani kebab is the biggest, consisting of one skewer of barg kebab (charbroiled filet mignon) and one of koobideh (lean spiced ground beef formed into a cylinder on the skewer). Chicken barg is made from the breast, all white meat and excruciatingly tender.

But perhaps best of all is lamb chop kebab, four or five spring lamb chops on the bone, with a pungent, gamy flavor perfect for the heaps of white rice that always accompany kebabs. Sprinkle everything up with somagh, a sourish condiment of ground sumac berries. Life is sweet in these small cafes, no matter how much somagh you sprinkle.

Orchid is moderately priced. Appetizers are $2.50 to $3.95. Main dishes are $6.95 to $10.95. Daily dishes are $6.95 to $10.95.

* ORCHID

* 3033 S. Bristol St., Costa Mesa.

* (714) 557-8070.

* Lunch Monday through Friday, 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.; dinner daily, 2:30 to 10 p.m.

* MasterCard and Visa accepted.

* PASTA GROTTO

* 117 Main St., Seal Beach.

* (310) 431-3006.

* Lunch and dinner Tuesday through Friday, 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m., Saturday and Sunday 2 to 10 p.m. Closed Monday.

* American Express, MasterCard and Visa accepted.