RESTAURANT REVIEW : Il Fornaio Puts the Din Back in Dinner

The enormous Il Fornaio in Pasadena resembles nothing so much as a gymnasium. The main dining room is a vast expanse of springy wood floors and white walls with a well-stocked bar on one side, a frenetically busy kitchen on the other.

When this room is filled, which it is nightly, there is a din such as one experiences at a high school basketball game: loud, busy, excited. The noise of human voices, background music, pots and pans and swinging doors bounces, reverberates, creates a screen of privacy in this fantastically wide-open room.

Despite the scores of people on display, you can’t hear what the people next to you are saying. The only reason you hear your dinner date is that he or she is yelling at you. The clamor is at such a pitch, one would not be surprised to see a troupe of acrobats tumble down the aisles, or hear a sudden operatic interlude, and yet the closest we get to this is when waiters gather around a table to sing a rather dolorous happy birthday in Italian. Invariably, at some point during a meal at Il Fornaio, often about 20 minutes in, I give up. I stop trying to have a coherent conversation. I’m exhausted.

There are certain things to appreciate at this mama of all Il Fornaio’s: It is, for example, family friendly, a popular spot to take your college-aged children to dinner or, conversely, your parents. One evening, we sit next to a family with three daughters. The table is strewn with pizza and pasta. Mother and father converse. One daughter reads a book. The two younger daughters are peacefully, happily ensconced under the table, the tablecloth like a tent; their connection to the table, a long, rubber rattlesnake.

Another virtue is the bakery area, itself almost as large as, say, the entire Il Fornaio in the Westside Pavilion. You can order decent coffees and pastries and panini to eat inside at small round tables, or to take outside to tables in a sunny, cobbled alley where there are just enough passersby to make things interesting. But skip the muffins: They’re oily and tasteless.

Without a reservation, you can often snag a seat at the counter and watch the breakneck pace of the pasta and pizza cooks. I tried this seat several times, for lunch and dinner, and invariably left feeling drained by the nonstop frenzy.

Or you can wait for a table. Sometimes, the wait isn’t too long: The restaurant saves a certain percentage of seats for walk-in customers. Even with reservations, you may have to wait. We made reservations days in advance for Sunday evening, arrived on time and were promptly offered the two worst tables in the house: one by the front desk and one by the kitchen door. We had to wait 20 minutes for anything else. (The hostess never did find a taker for that table by the kitchen.)

The wait for a seat is apt to be the first of several delays. For all the clatter and expenditure of energy, the service here is actually sluggish. It’s a trick to have salad, entree and dessert in less than two hours--so the two-hour parking validation comes in handy.

Is it all worth it? Ever hopeful, ever willing to be seduced by good looks and the manic veneer of professionalism, I was consistently disappointed. Carpaccio is topped with less than top-notch Parmesan. A coil of prosciutto, mozzarella and arugula looks prettier than it tastes. Topped with wild mushrooms, an arborio rice pancake is inexplicably set adrift in acidic, overwhelming tomato sauce.

A special ravioli filled with broccoli rabe provides a fierce, medicinal stab of bitterness, not balanced in the least by a gluey cream sauce rumored to contain goat cheese. An oblong pizza with potato, fresh tomato and artichokes is another inexplicable combination. A simple plate of green-and-white linguine with shrimp is far more palatable.

A 22-ounce porterhouse is a lovely, venerable piece of meat served with roasted potatoes, freshly sauteed spinach and undercooked chalky white beans. The whole Cornish hen looks great, but the sauce is too sweet and full of alcohol and the accompanying soft polenta leaves an unpleasant, fatty, floury coating in the mouth. Salmon is overcooked and dry.

The best moment of each meal seems to be the coffee, specifically espresso with a thick, tawny crema, which goes great with the tangerine creme brulee.

* Il Fornaio, 24 West Union St., Pasadena. Lunch and dinner seven days. Full Bar. Valet and validated parking. Major credit cards. Dinner for two, food only, $30-$70.