RESTAURANTS : Tomaso’s Does Much More Than Look Smart

It was a brutally hot summer evening, and the air conditioner was on the blink, but no one in the jam-packed dining room was actually complaining. As for me, I was nursing a bowl of seafood linguine alla Fra Diavolo--lobster, shrimp and sea scallops in a fiery red tomato sauce--and kind of enjoying the swelter.

The scene was Tomaso’s, a surprisingly good hilltop Italian restaurant in Dana Point. The air conditioner had been fixed by my next visit, but the place was still hot. Every time I’ve been here, Tomaso’s was full by 7:30.

It’s understandable. For years, Dana Point has been short on quality restaurants, and its residents have had to head up to Laguna for a better choice.

Now along comes Tomaso’s, a handsome, masculine-looking restaurant decked out in ceramics, pottery and flowery trellises and equipped with (of all things) a serious wine bar.

This is the fifth restaurant owned by Tomaso Maggiore, but his first in Orange County. (Maggiore owns restaurants in La Costa, Encinitas and a couple more San Diego County locations.) The chef here is Walter Isvano, a towheaded Sicilian of partly German ancestry. Isvano’s menu contains few surprises, but its construction is intelligent: appetizers like baked stuffed clams oreganata , pasta e fagioli and bruschetta; chewy pastas making the best of ingredients like smoked chicken and imported olives; pizzas and focaccia from a wood oven; a few good meat dishes.

You soon discover that the wine list--and service--is even more intelligent. Order a red wine and the waiter volunteers to cool it down to a pleasant temperature when the evening is hot. Glance at the wine list and find delicious, moderately priced standouts like the fruity, crisp ’91 Arneis from Vietti ($25) and the super Tuscan Le Volte 1990 from Ludovico Antinori ($29), a velvety red that is all smoothness and class.

Well-chosen wines often herald good things to come. Baked stuffed clams can be ponderous when prepared by inexperienced hands, but not to worry. Three of us fought over the five clams in this order. They’re good fresh clams in the shell, covered with a light stuffing of bread crumbs, white wine, garlic and oregano. Buonissimo.

Pasta e fagioli is the rustic bean and pasta soup eaten everywhere in the Italian peninsula. This tasty version has a good texture, and (surprise) is actually a little under- salted. The one disappointing appetizer is bruschetta; the grilled country-style bread is soggy from a smothering dose of chopped tomato and olive oil, but short on garlic.

When it’s time for pasta, look to a section of the menu titled “pasta as we love it in Italy.” Every pasta dish I tried here came up scrupulously al dente , another rarity on our restaurant scene. Now this kitchen needs to simplify and go easier on the sauces and this really will be like eating in Italy.

Take a dish like rigatoni con pollo affumicato , short tubes tossed with smoked grilled chicken, mushrooms and peas in a light cream sauce laced with Parmesan. Tasty, but it would be a cleaner, more straightforward dish without the cream sauce and the mushrooms. The scampi Fra Diavolo con lenticche is perfectly fine linguine with a really hot sauce smoking with red pepper, tomato and garlic, but it’s done in by a huge mound of lentils, dumped square in the middle.

There are better choices. The simple, spare rigatoni arrabbiata , for one: piquant imported olives, a touch of capers, crushed pepper and Romano cheese on a pile of perfectly cooked pasta. Lasagna Bolognese is heavy but delicious, the thin noodle sheets layered with a delicate veal ragu , creamy bechamel sauce, top-notch marinara and a bonus of grilled sausage served on the side.

The meat dishes are few but well chosen. There’s a lemony veal piccata accompanied by buttery green beans and carrots. A fine chicken paillard comes with roasted potatoes and an oddball cold side dish the chef calls Bermuda onion salad. (It’s mostly onions, with a few tomatoes and a vinaigrette dressing.)

There’s pizza, too, the thin-crust version, cooked in a wood-burning brick oven. Pizza Bellini is topped with grilled eggplant, a light sprinkling of pesto, fresh tomato and whole milk mozzarella cheese. Pizza Romana has onion, mushrooms, three kinds of cheese and a heap of salty pancetta bacon.

For dessert, the chef makes his own tortoni , an almond-rich frozen confection laced with fruits and nuts. The best pastry is probably the very French profiteroles , puff pastry filled with ice cream, drowned in chocolate sauce. I saw a lot of people order profiteroles, and down them with gusto. I didn’t hear a single complaint, either.

Tomaso’s is moderately expensive. Appetizers are $3.50 to $8. Pizzas are $8 to $10.95. Pastas are $8.95 to $17.95. Italian specialties are $12.95 to $17.95.

* TOMASO’S

* 34085 Pacific Coast Highway, Dana Point.

* (714) 661-0202.

* Lunch daily, 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m.; dinner daily, 5 to 11 p.m.

* American Express, MasterCard and Visa accepted.