RESTAURANT REVIEW : Dominick’s Offers Few Pleasures

One night at Dominick’s East Village restaurant in Long Beach, we have a very chatty waitress. She tells us how, after much research, the 10-year-old steakhouse 555 East was transformed into its present incarnation, a family-style Italian American restaurant. The company even flew her and other staff members to Chicago and New York to eat in the hugely successful family-style Italian American restaurants there, so they could get a feel for the concept.

The space was remodeled in leather-dark wood to look like, well, an Italian restaurant in East Greenwich Village. The tables were equipped with lazy susans and stacks of plates for family-style dining; private party rooms were created, and enormous portions of spaghetti and chopped salads and whole chickens were meant to be shared.

Unfortunately, our waitress prattles on, some of the most popular things in New York and Chicago--the family-style dining and the huge portions, for example--just didn’t catch on in Long Beach. The private dining rooms weren’t such a big hit either: Customers felt cut off from the rest of the restaurant. Soon the lazy susans were retired and portions were cut--a little.

And, she says, people have complained that Dominick’s food is not really Italian. Well, it’s not, she admits; Dominick’s food is Italian American--based on the kind of cooking done by Italian immigrants who couldn’t find in the United States the ingredients they once depended on--spaghetti and meatballs, manicotti, chicken piccata, veal Marsala, etc.

Hello? Excuse me? Italian cooking here in the last 10 years--even in Long Beach--has been all about gaining access to those very ingredients Italian immigrants once mourned? The extra-virgin olive oil, sun-dried tomatoes, buffalo-milk mozzarella, dry ricotta, decent pasta, porcini mushrooms, Parmigiano-Reggiano, etc.?

Of course, people can be nostalgic about anything they grew up on, but without Chicago’s or New York’s population of Italian Americans weaned on slow-cooked red sauces, this type of restaurant, especially such an expensive one, may find customers hard to come by. It’s true that some Italian American restaurants do a thriving business (the Alejos in Westchester and Venice, and Ferraro’s in Ventura come to mind), but their allure is their low prices.

Dominick’s food is expensive for what it is, and dinner bills add up. Ravioli is $11.95. Meat entrees range from $10 (roast chicken) to $24 (lamb chops). Portions may be gargantuan, but who cares if the food isn’t good?

And it isn’t. We chanced upon a few stray pleasures almost by accident: a grilled artichoke, its leaves delectably crisped; hearts-of-romaine with crumbled Gorgonzola. The Caesar has a tasty dressing, but there’s not enough of it to temper all the hard, dry croutons.

But the plump crab cake has a gummy interior; “Wicked” garlic rolls are doughy and leaden; baked clams “Casino” taste like rubber bands in bread crumbs. The house red sauce is astringent. Spaghetti with braciole, or beef roll, sounded irresistible to me, but the pasta is undercooked, the meat tastes like old roast beef, the red sauce is unrelentingly sharp. Penne with four cheeses and prosciutto has a sticky, gluey white sauce and, inexplicably, a few odd lumps of hamburger or sausage meat.

Chicken piccata, although tender, is low on flavor--no discernible lemon. All the meats we taste share a peculiar scorched, faintly chemical taste--most evident in the veal Marsala. A filet is stringy, and the so-called wild mushrooms with it aren’t. Pricey lamb chops emanate a sour scent from creepy pickled onions and a very wine-saturated sauce.

On our first visit, I wish we’d been told that entrees come with vegetables; we wouldn’t have spent $10 for plates of spinach and asparagus.

As for dessert, ricotta fritters taste like undercooked pancakes; creme brulee lacks creaminess and weight; tortoni taste only of rum.

Too bad. The service is convivial and adept; the room has an appealing sparkle. If only, time after time, the final, lingering taste wasn’t disappointment.

* Dominick’s East Village, 555 E. Ocean Blvd., Long Beach, (310) 437-0626. Open Monday through Friday for lunch, seven days for dinner. Full bar. Major credit cards accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $28-$74.