RESTAURANT REVIEW : Mezzaluna: Unpleasant Adventure in Dining

It is possible to walk into Mezzaluna in Beverly Hills, be seated promptly, enjoy courteous, prompt service and have an OK meal. A recent lunch was precisely that: an exercise in efficiency and modest satisfactions.

It’s also possible, as we discovered one Saturday night, to walk into Mezzaluna, find no record of our reservations and be made to feel it would be better for everyone if we slunk back out the door.

We stayed, however, and were seated, begrudgingly, at the table nearest the door. For a while, everything moved along in a predictable, civilized manner: menus, drinks and bread were delivered, orders were taken. Appetizers arrived. So far, so good.

But when our dinners arrived I was given the wrong item. The waiter took it back. “It’ll be just a minute,” he said.

Twenty minutes later, when everyone else at the table was almost finished with their dinners, the waiter materialized for the first time since he served us. “Three more minutes,” he promised.

Fifteen minutes after that, after the busperson had cleared the table of everyone else’s plates, my entree was plopped before me. “Sorry,” said the waiter.

During the 40 minutes I sat with no dinner, there was no offer to bring me anything to tide me over. And after the plate arrived (I had it boxed to go), there was no offer of a complimentary dessert or even a cup of coffee to appease the discomfort of not receiving my dinner. The $16 entree figured into the bill as blithely as if I’d been able to eat it and enjoy it in the company of my friends. The manager, when consulted on the matter, did not express the slightest concern or empathy. “Oh,” he said, “sorry.”

And why should he be concerned? That night, the tables filled up, the noise level became fashionably obliterating and a hefty singles crowd assembled at the bar. Clearly, Mezzaluna has its share of customers--maybe too many. The management seems to be cultivating an indifference designed to discourage any more. We got the hint. We won’t return.

Mezzaluna is a franchise--there are Mezzalunas in Brentwood, Aspen and New York. And it should be said that the food has a predictable consistency, a characteristic that serves as a virtue--occasionally the only--in chain restaurants. With few modulations, the food at the Beverly Hills branch hovers in the acceptable zone.

Mezzaluna offers five kinds of carpaccio, from the familiar beef carpaccio with arugula and shaved Parmesan, to the surprisingly delicious and smoky goose carpaccio with Parmesan and truffle oil.

The Caesar salad, though unremarkable, is fresh and perfectly fine. And there’s a good bean salad with crisp celery, white beans and nicely sweet shrimp. A field salad comes with goat cheese and “eggplant patties,” peculiar fried balls of eggplant and bread crumbs that are like a fairly awful kind of eggplant falafel.

Thin-crusted pizzas are baked in a wood-burning oven, with a curvy exterior made to look like a small, curtained stage. One pizza comes sparsely topped with a few shreds of pancetta , fresh chunks of tomato, a few threads of onion and a smattering of cheese to create a slightly bald effect--I overheard one customer call it “the hairless Chihuahua of pizzas.”

A good wild mushroom pizza comes with a traditional tomato-sauce-and-mozzerella base with a smattering of wild mushrooms stretched with a few domestic mushrooms.

A tasty, but none-too-tender New York steak, sliced and fanned out over a bed of arugula requires a devoted amount of chewing.

A special pasta--green fusilli with smoked salmon and pesto cream--is smooth and balanced, not at all overwhelmed by the salmon. Black linguine with shrimp and tomato sauce has supple noodles as black as licorice. The best thing I can say about the maccheroncini with duck sausage and peppers is that it is hot, spicy hot. Desserts are decidedly average.

As for the dinner I didn’t get that night--it’s too bad the sole stuffed with spinach and a few slivers of smoked salmon didn’t arrive in time for me to eat out of the kitchen--it was a pretty darn good piece of fish.

Mezzaluna, 9428 Brighton Way, Beverly Hills, (310) 275-6703. Lunch Monday through Friday, dinner seven nights. Full bar. Valet parking. Major credit cards accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $38 to $82.