This Little Joe Is Not Anything Like Its Brothers

For many of us, the name Little Joe calls to mind marinara sauce and Chianti bottles. L.A.’s Chinatown has a Little Joe and so does San Francisco, and they’re both dark, clubby, unrepentantly old-fashioned Italian places with ultra-loyal customers.

Don’t think for a minute that Little Joe in the City of Orange is a kindred spirit. True, five years ago it was an all-Italian restaurant, but about that time a man named Jose Altamurano took over. Altamurano, a native of Chile, redid the restaurant’s menu completely, adding many of his favorite Chilean dishes and several from neighboring Peru. Today, although I can’t imagine who still orders fettuccine Alfredo here, he bills Little Joe as a “fine Italian and South American” restaurant.

I’d call it a true local curiosity. The ambience reminds me of restaurants I’ve visited in South America (not the ones I’d want to go back to, I have to say). The first thing you see as you walk in is a large commercial refrigerator filled with artificial fruits and vegetables.

The dining room is long, like the long dining cars you find on trains headed down to such remote Chilean destinations as Puerto Montt or Tierra del Fuego. The music is apt to be Ferrante and Teicher piano tunes or a tango version of the theme from “Exodus.” I do like the soccer-ball-shaped Spanish-language beer sign that reads “Adelante, Budweiser” (“Go forward, Bud,” if I’m allowed a bit of poetic license) and the Pisco Sour sign over the bar.

What’s a Pisco Sour, you say? It’s the national cocktail of Peru, made with whiskey sour mix, the sweet, spicy local brandy called Pisco and cracked ice, all stirred together and strained into an elegant wide-mouthed whiskey sour glass. Personally, I find the idea alone almost irresistible.

The menu provides a brief but informative treatise on Chilean cuisine, which is highly developed and on the hearty side. Practically everything here comes with wonderful dense-textured bread shaped like a flying saucer, and pebre , a watery, cilantro-happy salsa you can eat with bread, meat or fish. Chileans eat a lot of fish, incidentally, because they have 5,000 miles of coastline. But in the great Andean tradition, they are meat-eaters too. Expect almost anything from this kitchen, from Chilean bouillabaisse to steak topped with fried eggs.

One stratagem is to start out in Peru, then work your way south. Papa rellena is definitely Peruvian, a delicious deep-fried cake made from mashed potatoes and filled with ground beef, aromatic spices and a smidgen of olives. I don’t much care for the various flaky turnovers ( empanadas ), no matter how nicely braided their tops are or how shiny with egg glaze. Saltenas Bolivianas , for instance (Altamurano crosses the Bolivian border too), are on the sweet side, with a cloying chicken and beef filling.

The menu page marked “Chef’s Specialties” is basically Peruvian also. Papa a la Huancaina could be described as Peruvian rarebit, a boiled potato smothered in an unctuous cheese sauce. The menu tells us aji de gallina is shredded chicken in spicy nut sauce, but the description hardly does it justice. The aji sauce is fragrant with spices and rich with ground peanuts. Lomo saltado is far more peasanty--basically slices of beef that have been smothered with tomato, onion and French fries.

The menu’s back page is labeled “Chilean Corner,” and these dishes are definitely hearty, if nothing else. Pastel de choclo is a heavy pie made from corn and ground beef--upscale mush, really, with a sweet aftertaste and a crunchy top.

And you’d better bring your friends to help you finish arrolado con ensalada Chilena , a monster galantine of cold chunked pork. If ordinary cold cuts were bicycle tires, these guys would belong on a Mack truck: about five massive slices of pungent spiced pork, wrapped up in a gelatinous skin that is flecked with red pepper. The Chilean salad referred to in the name of the dish is merely a colorful pile of marinated tomatoes and onions, and despite all the vinegar in it, it never begins to stand up to the massive pork roll.

Are there seafoods? Natch. Sopa marinara, sort of Chilean bouillabaisse, is a clean-tasting broth chock full of fish such as corvina (sea bass) or perhaps congrio (golden king klip imported from Chile), plus the de rigueur clams, mussels and crab.

And at Little Joe, you can have your corvina (or congrio , for that matter) and eat it too-- al horno , frito or Margarita-style, for instance. Al horno here means baked in a white sauce; frito is deep-fried. I’m having mine Margarita-style, covered with bechamel sauce, butter and a combination of shellfish.

Do save room for two mondo bizarro desserts, however. Panqueque Celestino isn’t that odd, just a thin crepe filled with a milky caramel sauce. The torta mil hojas (torte of a thousand layers), though, is wonderfully weird, a stack of sugary pastry shingles with a delightful crackling texture that’s been layered with rich, buttery caramel.

Hah! And you were expecting tirami su.

Little Joe is moderately priced. Appetizers are $1.50 to $6.95. Main dishes are $8.45 to $14.95. Desserts are $1.50 to $2.75.

LITTLE JOE

1535 W. Chapman Ave., Orange.

(714) 750-0123.

Open daily, 11 a.m. to 9:30 p.m.

American Express, Discover, MasterCard and Visa accepted.