RESTAURANT REVIEW : Erratic Quality Makes Old Favorite a Gamble : When Ristorante Fabrizio is good, it is exquisite. But tough meats and over-salting cause even some classic dishes to fail.

Fabrizio is a name long associated in this region with fine Italian cuisine.

For years Fabrizio Marangoni ran his restaurant in Camarillo. He built a loyal following who valued authentic Florentine cooking and the rare ministrations of a kitchen that would “create for you,” as the menu now states it, in the unlikely event you didn’t find something exactly to your liking.

Ristorante Fabrizio now operates in the Westlake area of Thousand Oaks, from a lovely dining room tucked in the quiet rear corner of The Evergreen Center. Loyalists still arrive nightly. The menu remains a map of Italy’s most inspired dishes, plus a few all-Fabrizio conceptions.

The dining room is Fabrizio’s first pleasure: a simple square with dark-wood wine storage racks as room dividers and canopied booths, each a cloistered world of its own, lining two walls. You will feel immediate comfort, a sense--especially in one of the booths--of “home.”

But the food in recent visits proved inconsistent, with classic dishes arriving as great successes and unaccountable failures. Complicating matters further was the kitchen’s liberal use of salt, for me a preference, but not so for my dining companions. Be warned: The food is salty.

Start with shrimp Fabrizio ($8.50), in which large shrimp are butterflied, sauteed perfectly, and adrift in a moat of Dijon mustard/vodka sauce. The result is stunning, what Fabrizio does best: sparklingly fresh seafood, cooked slightly rare so the result is succulent, never tough, and a bracing, earthy sauce unabashed in its reach for full flavor without overwhelming the delicacy of seafood flavors. This appetizer, while pricey, is my favorite first course in any Ventura County restaurant and easily a signature dish that makes clear why Fabrizio has so many fans.

But beware the eggplant Macario ($8.50), in which perfectly grilled, thinly sliced eggplant is stuffed with wonderfully piquant Gorgonzola cheese and thick, tough, overheated prosciutto--leathery enough to require some forceful knife work. The tomato-cream sauce, fresh and delightful, just isn’t enough to overcome the marring, salt-heavy meat. This dish typifies what can go wrong here, as it is so potentially satisfying but for the one mishandled ingredient.

Caesar salad ($4.50) is a rare treat: fresh and pungent, without the glueyness of so many commercial preparations. Snails with butter, garlic and Gorgonzola cheese ($6.95) are handled nicely but suffer, even to this palate, from over-salting.

Pasta courses showed the same troublesome division of success and failure. A simple, classic capellini al pomodoro ($9.95) was properly al dente in the fine angel hair pasta but awash in salty, bland tomato sauce that found little shoring up by the faintest traces of garlic and basil. Gnocchi with Gorgonzola sauce ($10.95) was most disappointing of all, and to be avoided: The potato dumplings were leaden, glutinous and unredeemed by a richly flavorful sauce.

Try instead the rigatoni puttanesca ($9.95), in which the pasta is dressed with a lusty sauce of tomatoes, capers, anchovies, black olives and bell peppers. This is not only what this characteristically spicy dish can be but istaken, even, to a higher level.

Veal scallopine with lemon ($17.95), a classic picatta treatment, succeeded in the treatment but not the veal, which was tough and dry, unforgivable in a dish built upon delicacy. But filet mignon topped with Gorgonzola ($19.95) was perfect: charbroiled, densely flavorful, perfectly turned out.

The most consistent successes were fish entrees ordered from the daily specials menu. Mahi mahi ($18.95), charred outside and succulent within, arrived topped with a heady sauce of olives, tomatoes, white wine, garlic, capers and bell peppers. Poached salmon ($18.95), a generous center-cut filet, was the picture of elegance and forkful of pleasure: delicately flavored within, decadently sauced in champagne cream without. This is the seafood dish fit for a true Sybarite.

Desserts were all quite good, particularly the Napolean, with a flaky pastry that was a rare achievement of flavor and delicacy; and creme caramel, the example of silken restraint and nuanced flavors.

Fabrizio’s has an extensive, well-chosen wine list, but prices can be high. Be sure to check for wine specials--in one recent visit a bottle of 1992 Silver Ridge Merlot, a terrifically supple and full red, was available for $26.50.

Sadly, Fabrizio’s falls behind other restaurants of its ambition when it comes to offering fine wines by the glass. As a result, the rather humdrum Pinot Grigio, Chardonnay, Chianti and Cabernet Sauvignon that are offered seem out of place--and downright uninspiring at the uptown tariff of $4.25 and $4.75 per glass. If your party is large enough, pick a bottle instead.

Fabrizio’s does so many things well that it is frustrating to report that inconsistency, coupled with fairly high prices, make dining here a gamble. Fabrizio Marangoni wrote to us at press time to say that his main chef was on vacation during a period of time that, we would discover, overlaps with some of our review visits. That fact noted, play it safe and reduce your risk by choosing carefully and making clear your preferences on salt.

Details

* WHAT: Ristorante Fabrizio.

* WHERE: 3731 E. Thousand Oaks Blvd., Westlake, 496-9033.

* WHEN: Lunch from 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday; dinner from 6 to 9 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, from 6 to 10 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays.

* FYI: AE, V, MC. Dinner for two, food only: $60-$80.