RESTAURANT REVIEW : There <i> Can</i> Be Too Much of a Good Thing

Driving through Torrance’s industrial expanses, aging suburbs and endless road repair, there is suddenly a sense that the era of the global village may truly be upon us for here, in a new Old Town arcade, is a restaurant named after a Provencal garlic sauce: Aioli.

Owners George and Donna Moussalli and chef Rick Reyes from San Pedro’s Sixth Street Bistro have created this ambitious, upscale mini-conglomerate containing a tapas bar, a fine dining room and a bakery named Breadsticks.

The dining room has a clubby, civilized tone, with dark, rosy wood, double-clothed tables and handcrafted, surprisingly comfortable iron chairs. A smaller room, crammed with shelves of wine, accommodates special parties.

Dinner guests are handed two menus: the dinner menu that features a familiarly eclectic California pan-cultural cuisine, and the tapas menu. And herein lies the problem: Aioli is a hodgepodge.

There’s too much going on in the same kitchen. The glue that tries to unite these elements is metaphorically, and sometimes literally, aioli, and that’s a slippery concept.

One night, a mustard yellow saffron aioli is served with assorted breads; another night it’s a purplish Kalamata olive variation or one made with sun-dried tomatoes. Not all these aiolis go with Breadsticks’ sweet walnut bread or deep-fried cheese bread they’re served with. Aioli, made with olive oil, egg yolks and garlic, is rich. Pairing aioli, especially some of these “flavored” aiolis, with other rich or strongly flavored items is a revealing mistake: There can be too much of a good thing.

Deep-fried calamari, already a deluge of fat grams, is served with lemon zest aioli; the result is cloying. On the other hand, aioli is traditionally used on steamed vegetables; yet here, a “fat-free aioli,” is offered--an idea as oxymoronic and absurd as fat-free butter or fat-free olive oil.

The kitchen is clearly capable of some delicious food, but given the prices, we want all the food to be excellent. A loosely named “Thai shrimp tostada,” a nest of crispy fried noodles bursting with rock shrimp in a tasty sweet and sour broth, is a spirited, serendipitous success (even as it bears no resemblance to any tostada ever). The caviar burger may be made with dull blini, but the generic caviar is quite good.

The Caesar salad is here gilded with toasted pumpkin seeds, cheesy croutons--and a sweet dressing. The wild mushroom pizza crust is too oily and its promised wildness is a sham: At $11 for an individual-sized pie, it’s reasonable to expect a preponderance of shiitake, not a lone thin slice among all domestics.

The kitchen at Aioli may be at its best with meat and potatoes, considering the delicious grilled lamb chops and cream-scalloped “dauphinoise” potatoes. The breast of the lemon pepper duck is cooked perfectly: medium-rare, moist, tender.

Chef Reyes is said to have apprenticed himself to a “paella master.” We devote one visit to Aioli to paella . . . and tapas, the tiny dishes from Spain created to enhance drinking and conversation.

We start with chorizos, thin slices of dry cured sausage something like Italian coppa, and a plate of Manchego, in this case, a hard, not particularly distinguished sheep’s milk cheese: Both dishes swim in oil.

A shallow pan of bright yellow rice and shellfish, Ai oli’s paella just misses: It’s too salty, too dry and has so much saffron that everything--rice, scallops, clams--sings the same astringent yellow note.

The best thing about Sunday brunch is the live, tranquil and tranquilizing harpist. The kitchen, meanwhile, plays fast and loose with the menu--”Grilled polenta with white bean chili and chicken sausage,” for example, is polenta in a dark, meaty sauce with mushrooms and bacon--it’s awful.

At least the deep-fried chocolate ravioli taste incalculably better than they sound.

* Ai oli, 1261 Cabrillo Ave., Torrance, (310) 320-9200. Open for lunch Mondays through Fridays. Seven nights for dinner. Open Sundays for brunch. Full bar. Major credit cards accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $36-$76.