RESTAURANT REVIEW : Tonno a New Place With Hits, Misses

The most amazing thing about small neighborhood Italian restaurants in Los Angeles is that they just keep opening. Never mind that the competition is stiff--name restaurants and famous chefs now serve pastas and pizzas for about the same prices charged by many more modest and lesser-known establishments. Still, the boom booms. Ever-hopeful young pasta boilers endure the endless red tape of opening a restaurant in this town, put their own private fortunes, and the fortunes of their investors, on the line to throw open their doors and offer exactly what 20 other joints in a two-mile radius are offering. Pizza, pasta, insalata. It’s the culinary mantra of our age.

Tonno on West Third Street, in the space formerly and briefly occupied by C’est Fan Fan, is yet another of these many small, cozy Italian kitchens to open in recent months. Tonno, which means tuna in Italian, is not named so much for the fish as for one Fabrizio (Tonno) Tonnucci, a former home chef to the likes of Victor Drai, Richard Zanuck and Georges Marciano.

The first thing anyone notices about Tonno the restaurant is the color of the walls: Yellow. No matter who I’m with, there first had to be a discussion as to what kind of yellow it is, and if it’s pleasing or not. Some say it’s canary yellow, or the yellow of a very ripe lemon, but the painters among us insist it’s close to a Naples or Neapolitan yellow, which would be perfect, of course, for an Italian restaurant. Whether you see it as a harsh or a spirited yellow, the room still has its charms: for example, a long line of old, prettily framed prints of birds and food hung low, just above the gray-green banquette.

There’s a calm, pleasant Mom and Pop feel to Tonno. The service is unassuming, gracious, although one Saturday night our waitress gets a bit stretched. Tonno himself is very much in evidence: That’s him in the open kitchen cooking the dishes his Bolognese mother taught him how to make.

Our first impressions could be better: Olive oil served with the basket of bread has an unpleasant bitter edge, and the bread sticks are stale. This does not, I fear, bode well.

But all the appetizers are distinctive and delicious: Good prosciutto comes with sweet, ripe cantaloupe, as it should. Layers of warm tomatoes, red peppers and melted smoked mozzarella are luscious. Although, I prefer an unadorned carpaccio, Tonno’s tricked-up “classic carpaccio,” with domestic mushrooms, greens, artichokes and a lemony dressing, wins me over. The best appetizer, however, is the tonno carpaccio, a kind of Italian sashimi: raw tuna in a gingery soy dressing.

Pappa al pomodoro, the soup invented by thrifty Tuscan peasants to use up day-old bread, is here thick, a bit salty, infused with sage and kicked into gear with a smart drizzle of olive oil.

Unfortunately, the consistent quality and appeal of the appetizers doesn’t seem to carry into the pastas and secondi.

Angel hair pasta with sweet rock shrimp is the clearest, best pasta we try, and it’s hampered by too many red chili flakes. Rigatoni all’amatriciana wallows in a thick, salty tomato sauce with a snarl of long, undercooked strings of onion. The house-made potato gnocchi has a good texture and flavor, but its Gorgonzola sauce and asparagus topping is too rich and hastily made: Half the asparagus is mushy, the other half raw.

The best entree is a plump, juicy free-range chicken breast in a hearty balsamic sauce; too bad the promised roasted potatoes is one silly, teeny potato stuffed with a blob of tasteless pesto.

Forget the traditional risotto: Here, a stringy and uninspired osso buco is served with mashed potatoes. A special swordfish steak topped with a chopped tomato and garlic is unmemorable.

The prices at Tonno are reasonable--especially on some good Italian wines. Then again, Italian food all over Los Angeles is reasonable. So why come here? Perhaps because you live in the neighborhood. Or you’re willing to give a young, energetic chef a chance. And because, given those appetizers and the wine list, he just might come through on the secondi.

* Tonno, 8412 West Third Street, Los Angeles. (213) 852-1223. Open for lunch Monday through Friday. Open for dinner Monday through Saturday. Beer and wine served. All major credit cards accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $34-$58.