RESTAURANT REVIEW : Big Helpings, Good Taste : Buon Gusto offers a large menu on which everything is cooked to order with practiced skill.

Excuse me, but no number of new Italian restaurants is ever going to make anyone mistake this area for Melrose Avenue.

Get off the San Diego Freeway at Devonshire, and turn east. Directly across from the mini-mall that houses Buon Gusto restaurant, you’ll spot three gas stations in a row--polar opposites, aesthetically speaking, to such stylish Art Deco storefronts on Melrose as Wacko and Kanji.

Buon Gusto doesn’t physically resemble a Melrose Avenue Italian restaurant, either. Apart from a slightly trendy espresso bar placed smack in the middle of the boxy, mostly white room, its appointments are distinctly suburban: glass table tops, harsh lighting, hard vinyl chairs.

We’ll live with it. Buon Gusto--which is Italian for good taste --measures up to a certain standard and then some. It turns out this is that rarity, an all-purpose suburban Italian joint where food really does taste good. The reason is simple enough. Virtually everything on this large menu is cooked to order and with practiced skill.

Like many of its suburban counterparts, Buon Gusto delivers bang for the buck. For instance, most of the pastas--oversized platters well suited to sharing--are less than $8.

The delicious antipasto alla Buon Gusto is a feast of prosciutto, grilled eggplant, cheeses, black olives, delicately cured anchovies, ripe tomatoes and a king-sized bed of greens, everything intelligently doused with balsamic vinegar and fruity olive oil. The small plate, ostensibly for one, is plenty for two. The larger size (“for two”) would really satisfy four.

The hot appetizers are mostly seafood items like clams in broth, sauteed scampi and light, chewy, calamaretti fritti . Curiosity compelled me to try something called spiedini alla Romana , which the menu describes as “deep-fried egg bread in a light anchovy sauce.” My conclusion was that I prefer maple syrup on my French toast. Anchovy sauce is downright kinky in this context.

Buon Gusto’s soups are redemptive, though. Don’t miss the tortellini in brodo , meat-filled pasta pockets in chicken stock-- kreplach soup to the tenth power, more or less. Buon Gusto also serves its tortellini in cream sauce ( alla panna ) or with a meaty Bolognese sauce, but nothing could bring out the homey flavors of these feather-light dumplings any better than that rich chicken broth.

Among the other soups, the rustic, mildly spiced pasta e fagioli is prepared with almost no salt. Oddly, stracciatella alla Romana , a spinach-enriched cousin of Chinese egg drop soup, suffers only from too much salt.

Bucatini and meatballs is one of the best pastas here. ( Bucatini are, like spaghetti, about as thick as telephone wire, and they stand up very well to a meaty ragu sauce.) There are also good cheese ravioli, laden with a thick, moss green blanket of pesto. Rigatoni alla amatriciana generously commingle large tube-shaped pasta with diced pancetta bacon and prosciutto.

Fusilli alla fantasia comes with a blend of pine nuts, cream, brandy, shallots and Gorgonzola. Overly sauced pasta dishes can still be tasty, but this particular dish would be a lot better with less sauce.

*

The real surprise here is a first-rate risotto. In lesser hands, risottos can be called mushy, grainy, soupy and any number of other damning things. Buon Gusto’s rice ai gamberetti is nothing less than masterful, a steaming dish of beautifully cooked, pink-tinged arborio rice plus a handful of plump poached shrimps.

For those who think of pastas merely as Act I, Buon Gusto provides a second act of steaks, veal, chicken and seafoods. This is one of the few Valley restaurants where you can get a nice fritto misto di mare , and I recommend you do. The plate is composed of fried scallops, shrimps and whitefish, nicely punctuated by those good calamaretti . A fine broiled pork chop comes with a garlic and oregano sauce. The flamboyant veal alla Garibaldina is three tender medallions of veal, arranged with slices of fried eggplant and a piquant lemon butter sauce.

The servers bring out a tray of store-bought ice cream novelties, but the restaurant’s own desserts are better. Sometimes there will be a fresh homemade tiramisu , or maybe even an eggy New York-style cheesecake on a one-inch graham cracker crust. Me, I’m having zabaglione (served for two or more), that simple preparation of egg yolks, sugar and Marsala, whipped to a froth and spooned into wine glasses.

One final word. Service at Buon Gusto can be daunting, occasionally slipshod. If the restaurant gets busy--and it often does--it may be 10 or 15 minutes before anyone stops by your table. Owner Benito Prezia runs the floor like a general inspecting his troops, but the man rarely assists with order-taking or dish-clearing.

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WHERE AND WHEN

Location: Buon Gusto, 15535 Devonshire St., Mission Hills.

Suggested Dishes: antipasto alla Buon Gusto, $6.50 (for one), $11.50 (for two); tortellini in brodo , $4.50; rice ai gamberetti , $9.50; fritto misto di mare , $11.95.

Hours: 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday to Thursday, 11:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday.

Price: Dinner for two, $20 to $38. Beer and wine only. Parking lot. American Express, MasterCard and Visa.

Call: (818) 893-9985.