RESTAURANT REVIEW : Enough to Smile About at Sorriso

In Old Town Pasadena, an Italian restaurant of the hip, trendy variety invariably attracts an overflow of customers--the quality of the food notwithstanding. Sorriso, barely two months old and jammed every night, may help force the competition to raise their standards.

Sorriso is Italian for “smile,” and indeed we’re greeted by a cheerful hostess, who promises us a table in 5 to 10 minutes. We end up clogging the entryway for 30 minutes and watch with mounting envy as the predominantly adult crowd twirls pastas and sips wine.

The room itself is pleasantly unpretentious--there are the usual brick walls, visible ducts, bad art. And the wait can be even longer at nearby places with food not nearly as acceptable as Sorriso’s.

How grateful we feel just to be seated at a table, to be given airy bread with a bowl of fresh chopped tomatoes, basil and olive oil. The service, we find, is adequate, but rushed. Waiters at Sorriso have the unnerving tendency to be obsequious, especially as the time nears to present the check.

Still, some of Sorriso’s food may actually bring a smile to your face: Most pizzas and pastas are excellent. A few salads and appetizers, however, need work. We enjoyed the insalata del mare , a pretty appetizer of calamari, shellfish, red peppers and black olives dressed with lemon juice and good olive oil.

Sauteed green mussels were a bit rubbery, but their garlicky tomato broth was great for soaking up with bread. The cannellini-beans-and-tuna appetizer seemed to prove only that the chef could open cans: canned-tasting beans were topped with dark, canned tuna. It was the kind of concoction you’d make at home when you’re too lazy to shop or cook.

Of the salads, I preferred the modest, tasty mista salad, a combination of iceberg and Romaine, with slices of fennel, cucumber, carrot and celery. The house Caesar was hardly traditional--a small bed of Romaine with a tangy, milky dressing surrounded by grated red cabbage--and bears the distinction of being the only Caesar I’ve met without croutons. I’ve had big croutons, crumb-size croutons, herbed, whole-wheat and eggplant croutons, but never no croutons.

Pizzas here have great, thin crackery crusts and just the right amount of topping. I loved the basic Margherita, a paean to hot, fresh tomatoes. The most commonly ordered items seem to be the big, reasonably priced bowls of pasta. The special one night was a plate of plump tortellini stuffed with delicious eggplant and topped with a light tomato sauce. Penne all’arrabbiata was chile-hot, designed for garlic lovers.

The bow-tie pasta, however, described on the menu as being served in a cream sauce with broccoli, garlic and hot pepper, was as bland as baby food. A few shakes of crushed red chiles delivered the promised punch. Risotto with shrimp tasted mostly, almost overwhelmingly, of hot wine.

My favorite entree was a plate of golden, lightly breaded calamari, cuttlefish, shrimp and scallops. I liked them simply drizzled with a couple of squeezes of lemon and dusted with salt, but there was also a light marinara sauce for dipping.

A nightly special of sea bass was cluttered up by a pink sauce containing a variety of other seafood--calamari, shrimp and scallops. The chicken breast with prosciutto was tender and tasty. So was the veal saltimbocca with prosciutto and mushrooms.

Entrees come only with a messy-looking bit of sauteed cabbage and carrots; potatoes and other vegetables can be ordered separately. As a vegetable lover, I didn’t mind the extra expense. In fact, my favorite part of each dinner at Sorriso was either the spinach, so fresh it snapped to the bite, or the nicely bitter sauteed rapini with garlic and oil.

The lunch menu at Sorriso is far smaller than the dinner menu and contains at least one choice item not available at dinner: a near perfect frittata with a choice of spinach, tomato, cheese or zucchini.

While it’s fun and relaxing to linger at Sorriso over a decent caffe latte or nice large pots of herb tea, the desserts themselves don’t necessarily add to the enjoyment.

The apple tart was leaden, the cannoli small and dull, the ice cream unexceptional. Still, no matter how long the line grew at the door, we were never rushed from our meal.* Sor riso, 46 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, (818) 793-2233. Lunch and dinner seven days. Beer and wine. Major credit cards accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $26 to $52.