RESTAURANTS : L’Opera Cuisine Hits Culinary High Note

If there’s fine dining in downtown Long Beach, we have a restaurant called L’Opera to thank.

This handsome establishment housed in a one-time savings bank is arguably the only dining room in Long Beach with a real big-city feel. It’s looking especially spiffy right now: Christmas greens and reds adorn its distinctive mixture of antique Roman and California-modern decor, pine boughs hang on mighty marble pillars, and the polished parquet floor reflects shiny Christmas ornaments hanging on the walls.

Long Beach people-watchers station themselves in the glass enclosure (almost a booth) around the haughty marble bar, which has a good view of the entire restaurant. Serious eaters--local business moguls, doctors from nearby St. Mary’s Hospital and the young and the restless of this city--prefer to sink down into one of the main dining area’s long, luxuriant green and gold fabric booths and get busy with the imposing menu.

That this restaurant is so well appointed is no surprise, when you consider the pedigree. L’Opera belongs to a company called Italatin, owners of the Planet Hollywood franchise in Costa Mesa, Trattoria Spiga in South Coast Plaza’s Crystal Court and Alegria, a popular tapas bar next door to L’Opera, among others.

Last Friday I tried to make lunch reservations but never got past the restaurant’s answering machine, a looping tape of language school Italian greetings and salutations. Finally I mustered my courage and simply showed up. The result: one of the choicer stools at the bar, where the full menu is available (during lunch only).

Appetizers aren’t the secret to the restaurant’s enduring popularity that the pastas or main courses are, but a few are richly satisfying nonetheless. The classic prosciutto di Parma e Reggiano is nothing more than ham and cheese, but two of the world’s great ones. The ham is a big platter of salty, beautifully cut prosciutto, plus a few roughly cut chunks of tangy imported Parmesan. Calamari fritti are mixed with deep fried whitebait, a pleasant and texturally interesting change from the usual presentation. Big appetites may go for gamberetti alla fagiolini : five grilled prawns protruding from a dish of cooked white beans. It would stop a grandfather clock.

Salads with grand names like Burina and Messalina are not as patrician as they imply, but that actually works to their benefit. Despite the posturing about the Messalina being a “Caesar salad, Roma style,” this crisp, assertive salad is really an old-fashioned Caesar with good imported Parmesan. The Burina salad conceals pale red dried tomatoes and lots of fresh sweet corn under a pile of mixed greens. The menu tells us that the tomatoes are homemade (or rather, home-dried). They’re certainly distinctive, combining acidic tang and sugary sweetness more complexly than a dime store sour ball.

Pastas dominate this large menu. They’re infallibly al dente and imaginative, though occasionally a bit contrived. Fettuccine alla Norcina and tagliolini al sugo di carne turn out to be made with the same wide, flat noodle, though the sauces differ. The fettuccine has a spicy cream-based tomato sauce laced with bits of an oddball sausage sharply flavored with orange zest. (If I didn’t know better, I’d swear it was made by a Greek.) The fine tagliolini soars because of a delicate veal ragu. It’s a gem.

Good veal-stuffed tortellini pop up in the (over-salted) stracciatella , the Italian version of egg drop soup, and also by themselves in a rich, creamy sauce of peas, ham and grated cheese. More riches include a delicious ravioli made with artichoke flour dough called panzerotti alla noci (rich indeed--it has a duck and mascarpone filling and comes in a creamy walnut sauce), agnolotti al Gorgonzola (fine spinach ravioli with an eggplant and cheese center) and a lasagna, which is ultra-dense, just as you’d expect.

If you’re one of those people who can handle pasta with a flavorful sauce and then proceed to a main course, get ready to go out in style. Treccia d’agnello e cervo is tender strips of lamb and venison, braided together and grilled, then brushed with butter and sage. The Florentine beefsteak ( bistecca alla Fiorentina ) is 16 ounces of fire-smoked beef (this cut, usually served plain in Italy, comes in a rosemary and balsamic vinegar dressing). Anyone who orders the filetto al pepe verde deserves to be enshrined in an eater’s hall of fame. This filet mignon may weigh in at a mere 12 ounces, but the radicchio and green peppercorn-vinegar sauce is all pagan pleasure and swooning richness.

Maybe after all this, you plan to skip dessert. Not me. L’Opera’s dessert list has to be counted among the most original anywhere, and not just among Italian restaurants, which are notoriously weak on desserts.

Pastry chef Donna Lee has created a dozen original desserts with Italian names. Sacchetto di cioccolata is a “shopping bag” formed of bitter chocolate and filled with a frothy zabaglione (egg yolks, Marsala wine and sugar). Vulcano is an eruption of chocolate, walnuts and whipped cream, mountain-shaped and lava-hot from the oven. Soffice e leggera is soffice (soft), all right, but hardly leggera (light). Imagine buttery pound cake topped with crushed pineapple, creme Anglaise, caramel sauce and billows of hand-whipped cream. Get the picture?

Service tends to be erratic because the restaurant is generally so busy (it could use a few more staffers). And the wine list, though not priced for value, has lots of good things to drink, including a variety of the so-called Super Tuscans and several good Italian whites from Friuli by a fine producer named Jermann, the latter wines priced in the low $30s and worth it.

L’Opera is expensive. Appetizers are $5.25 to $9.95. Pastas are $6.95 to $12.95. Main dishes are $11.25 to $19.95. Desserts are $3.95 to $6.25.

* L’OPERA

* 101 Pine Ave., Long Beach.

* (310) 491-0066.

* Lunch and dinner 11:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 11:30 a.m. to midnight Friday, 5 p.m. to midnight Saturday, 5 to 10 p.m. Sunday.

* All major cards accepted.

* Times Line(TM): 808-8463

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