RESTAURANT REVIEW : Make Yourself at Home : The ambience is <i> abbondanza</i> at Tina’s Ristorante Italiano, a cozy breath of fresh air in the high desert.

At the far end of Antelope Valley, just west of Lancaster, the high desert air is delightfully refreshing at dusk. Rows of Joshua trees, majestically lining both sides of the road, frame the purple sky. Follow a trail of lights against the mountainous backdrop, and eventually you come to 50th Street West, the main drag.

Tina’s is a small, modestly lit ranch house located on this street, but not well-marked, so you will need to keep a sharp lookout for the address. The proprietors keep things dark on the inside, too. Tina’s Ristorante Italiano won the “Most Romantic” award in the Antelope Valley Press for 1994, and it’s easy to understand why. This restaurant is so dimly lighted that you should bring a flashlight if you care to read the menu.

And if you don’t care--go ahead, kiss your date. No one is going to notice.

Tina’s was a house before it became a restaurant; the layout is a series of small, cozy dining rooms. The main seating area contains a six-stool bar that dispenses fancy drinks and cappuccinos. The decor, what you can make out of it, is equally cozy: low-slung ceilings, pink walls, a few modest objets d’art , white linen tablecloths and flickering, unusually dim candles.

Call the food standard-issue ‘90s Italian, the only twist being that the restaurant is run by an Italian family from Argentina. (Tina, by the way, is the name of the chef’s wife, not a play on the word Argentina .) That translates to homemade pasta and the usual array of Italian chicken and veal dishes, plus a few surprises.

Happily, the quality of ingredients is high, justifying prices that approach those of the distant trattorias in fashionable parts of Los Angeles. One steal is the beautiful antipasto freddo , an elegant plate of imported olives, bufala mozzarella with fresh tomatoes, halved walnuts and a heap of vinegary marinated vegetables. I’m less excited, though, by the peperoni arrostiti --somewhat flaccid roasted peppers anointed with a fruity olive oil and draped with a handful of dry, salty anchovies.

Most pastas and entrees come in big, gaudily enameled bowls, a nice touch that imparts abbondanza , the abundance of spirit that characterizes the Italian table. Both zuppa di cozze (steamed mussels) and zuppa di vongole (steamed clams) are abundant orders of shellfish drowned in broth flavored with garlic and white wine.

One entree not served in a bowl might be the restaurant’s best dish, the oddly named agnolotti dello chef. The crescent-shaped stuffed pasta called agnolotti is tricky to make. When the dough isn’t properly light it can be ponderous, but these agnolotti are wonderful, feathery-light pillows stuffed with an airy cheese-and-spinach mousse. I have just two complaints. They’d be better without the grainy, distractingly strong pesto on the plate, and there ought to be more than five per serving. In a restaurant so committed to abbondanza , five agnolotti seems stingy.

Other pastas are trencherman-sized portions of chewy noodles, though they too are occasionally undercut by their sauces. In penne arrabbiata , the short tube-shaped noodles come in a spicy marinara sauce that would taste better if used more sparingly. Another pasta that goes overboard is linguine tricolore , white, black and pink pasta with shrimp, sauteed kale, spices, fresh tomatoes and garlic. Too many tastes spoil the broth, to coin a phrase.

No problem, though, with ravioli papalina , well-crafted ravioli in a prosciutto and green pea cream sauce. And spaghettini , a noodle somewhere between spaghetti and angel hair in width, is the perfect foil for a minced veal ragu .

The best of the meat dishes is costolette alla Milanese , a thick bone-in veal chop. Tina’s pounds the chop thin, breads it lightly and sautes it. The good checca and balsamic vinegar dressing complement the tastes of the meat and the oil, but the chop is topped with some accompaniments that would be better on the side. The breading gets soggy fast with tomatoes leaking onto it.

You should also look for nightly specials such as sea bass in a lemon butter and caper sauce (much like a veal piccata sauce) or the plebeian pollo alla Scarpariello , a homey bowl of chicken, sausage, mushrooms and garlic. All main courses come with salad and pasta.

The dessert selection is minimal. You can choose the omnipresent tirami su, a gummy chocolate chip cheesecake, or the restaurant’s showpiece dessert: hot zabaglione con fragole for two, a frothy suspension of egg yolks, Marsala wine and sugar, made to order and served with strawberries. I’d go for the zabaglione.

WHERE AND WHEN

Location: Tina’s Ristorante Italiano, 42040 50th St. West, Quartz Hill.

Suggested Dishes: antipasti freddo , $6; agnolotti dello chef, $10; ravioli papalina , $10; costolette alla Milanese , $17.95; zabaglione con fragole , $11.

Hours: Lunch 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., dinner 5 to 9 p.m., Monday through Saturday. Closed Sunday.

Price: Dinner for two, $22-$45. Full bar. Parking lot. American Express, MasterCard and Visa.

Call: (805) 943-6668.