Tutto Style: All the Best Under the Sun or the Sea

Tutto Mare may or may not be Orange County’s best Italian restaurant. It is without doubt our most sophisticated.

This Fashion Island fixture belongs to San Francisco-based Spectrum Foods, owners of Prego in Irvine (and Beverly Hills), not to mention Chianti in West Hollywood and several Bay Area restaurants. Like its sisters, it’s an impressive-looking place.

Though Tutto Mare owes part of its rep to its luxurious appointments, decor never gives a restaurant staying power. Credit crack chef Corrado Gianotti and crafty general manager Claudio Arena for Tutto Mare’s enduring popularity. Arena changes the menu with regularity and keeps his predominantly Italian team of chefs and waiters in tiptop shape. Gianotti prepares dishes that no one else around here would dare to.

Tutto Mare (the name means “everything from the sea”) is at heart a seafood restaurant, but there’s more to it than seafood. The choices on this extensive menu extend to spit-roasted meats, creative salads, eccentric pastas and a dessert cart densely packed with elaborate pastries.

The concept draws a smartly dressed, self-confident crowd, so expect a loud buzz at dinner time.

The design is clubby: dozens of pillars faced with darkly stained wood, ornate French windows on the wall facing Fashion Island’s Atrium Court and a long, luxuriously crafted bar, ideal for sipping that essential Campari during the inevitable wait for tables at peak hours.

In the rear of the restaurant, a gallery of snazzy Art Deco posters hangs above a floor of inlaid marble, whose cream expanse is crisscrossed with a soothing shade of brown. The lighting is extravagant--blue and pale yellow, more what you’d expect in a Paris bistro than in a trattoria. The open kitchen has a tiled facade decorated with a netscape of ceramic crustaceans, kitschy harbingers of dishes to come.

The menu’s long and winding antipasto section is a hoot. Even the normally pedestrian antipasto misto --which is often just cold cuts, cheese and marinated vegetables in other Orange County Italian restaurants--gets into the act. This one is embellished by baby endives, poached scampi, fine-textured soppressata and bit of mussel salad on a tiny arugula leaf.

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The tartara di tonno would be delicious with a little less of the whole-grain mustard that chef Gianotti is so fond of. (The use of this mustard reaches extreme proportions on his otherwise fabulous rotisserie chicken.) The tartare is made from fresh Hawaiian tuna, mustard, green onion, capers and anchovies, hard to resist with rusks of grilled Tuscan bread.

Frivolezze di conchiglia is an arresting combination of poached mussels and huge, crab-cake-sized breaded scallops atop a bed of lightly dressed baby frisee lettuce. Look for the exquisite brodetto pepato di vingolette veraci in the soup and risotto section of the menu. A sea swell of tiny Manila clams, in their shells, comes submerged in a terrific, peppery white wine and garlic clam broth, rich with finely chopped leeks.

The risotto selection includes the ubiquitous porcini mushroom and shellfish versions, but I pass on them whenever the kitchen is featuring a special risotto, such as the one with ham and peas. This is soothing food, grainy and comforting. Gianotti, bless him, doesn’t overload the senses on this dish. It’s merely flecked with ham and fresh peas so you mainly taste rice.

The chestnut gnocchi is another great idea. I love the play between the sea scallops and the round, light-brown dumplings. It’s hard to tell one from the other, cloaked as they are in light cream sauce, so every bite is a surprise. Fettuccine con astice e con piselli is one more dish that makes good use of the humble pea. The beautifully cooked noodles are tangled up with lobster and peas in a delicate saffron sauce.

The main dishes here are hearty. One evening, the chef was preparing an irresistible special of mesquite-grilled salmon, served in spectacular form astride a saute pan full of artichokes and grilled potatoes. Gamberoni al piccante are beautiful freshwater prawns grilled with olive oil and, whoops, more of that whole-grain mustard.

Fresh fish such as ono, halibut and swordfish are also mesquite-grilled, and some of them--the fine sea bass ( branzino ), for example--are brought to the table whole and boned for you by the waiter.

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For meat eaters, there is usually an off-menu rack of lamb, a good veal chop (which would be even better without its prosciutto and Fontina cheese topping) and a dull New York steak served in thin slices with cannellini beans.

And then there are the desserts. At last count there were 13, which stare you in the face from the cart and dare you to resist them.

Delizia is a wedge of whipped cream, hazelnut crust and chocolate, sitting in a moat of Frangelico-flavored creme anglaise . The crusty lemon meringue tart has a lemony, eggy filling. Meringata is a round of pale meringue filled with vanilla ice cream and topped with shavings of white chocolate. Rollata is like a cross between a jelly roll and tiramisu, with a thick mascarpone cream substituting for the jelly.

No wonder there are so many sophisticated-looking joggers out there on the back bay.

Tutto Mare is moderate to expensive. Antipasti are $7.50 to $8.95. Soups and pastas are $4.95 to $13.25. Secondi are $11.50 to $17.95 (for whole fish).

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* TUTTO MARE

* 545 Newport Center Drive, Newport Beach.

* (714) 640-6333.

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

* All major cards.