STYLE / RESTAURANTS : A SICILIAN CRAVING

No matter when you go--lunch or dinner, weekend or weeknight--Drago sizzles. People wearing pale Armani tones and eccentric eyeglasses pack the bar, waiting for a table. The barista , meanwhile, works double time to send out espresso after espresso, trading rapid-fire quips with the waiters, who give the 3 1/2-year-old Santa Monica restaurant a charged-up charm. All the better because the decor--mainly blond wood, white walls and chairs dressed in green linen slipcovers--is fairly stark.

The smiling white-haired chef who bounces out to check on this and that and then disappears back into the kitchen is Celestino Drago. He looks exactly like you hope he would: as if he enjoys his own cooking. Wait--there he is again, across the dining room, dark-haired, somewhat grumpy this time. Oh, it’s his brother Calogero. How many brothers are there anyway? I ask the waiter. “I don’t know,” he shrugs, laughing. “I can’t keep track of them all. Here? Four of them.” With that many brothers ducking in and out, some nights it can feel like an Italian Marx brothers movie.

Celestino is the chef and director of Drago. Calogero takes care of the wines and the dining room. Tanino is in the kitchen, too. and Giacomino cooks at one of the two more casual offshoots in Beverly Hills and Pasadena called Il Pastaio.

I remember how thrilled I was to find Sicilian specialties on my first visit. At last, something that’s not northern Italian. When the first wave of authentic Italian restaurants hit Los Angeles, northern Italian was chic. Southern Italian was not. But that meant we were missing the wonderful cuisines of the south, including the fascinating Arabic-inflected cooking of Sicily.

Drago at least gives Sicilian dishes a small corner of the menu. Eggplant souffle, a custardy composition of eggplant and tomatoes, brings out the warm nuttiness and richness of the eggplant. And there’s spaghetti alla bottarga , too. That’s spaghetti with shavings of pressed, dried tuna roe. It tastes fishy and salty, as if the sea had been boiled down into a teaspoon, and it’s wonderful.

Pasta with sardines and fennel is another famous Sicilian dish--spaghetti in a light tomato sauce garnished with fennel, plumped-up golden raisins, pine nuts and steamed fresh sardines. Lusty and terrific. Not so a rabbit dish that always seems to come out dried up. I’ve ordered swordfish three times now, each time hoping for something other than flavorless breaded fish and pallid-tasting caponata , a vinegary eggplant relish.

The rest of the menu picks up dishes from all over Italy. I’ve always had good luck with the antipasti and first courses. Cone-shaped croquettes stuffed with ragu are very good. There’s a reliable salmon carpaccio paired with a little salad of paotatoes and green beans tossed with pesto, along with an excellent polenta layered with wild mushrooms. The deep-fried golden salt cod cakes on an onion confit beat out a crab cake any day.

Pasta arrives in such a rush, the waiter almost skids to a stop in front of the table. He doesn’t want it to get cold. It isn’t. The best is the spaghetti al cartoccio (cooked in what looks like a shiny foil balloon) for two. Perfectly al dente , it is studded with tiny scallops, mussels in the shell, rings of squid and fat shrimp in a light tomato sauce spiked with hot pepper. One night we leap at the special: spaghetti for two cooked with a whole fresh Dungeness crab, which made an appealing--and generous--first course for four. Also a good bet: orecchiette (“little ears”), thick pasta discs tossed with wild broccoli and pecorino. Risotto al Barolo one night is sour-tasting. But risotto with squid ink, inset with bay scallops and a few shrimp, is delicious, each pearly grain of rice cated with the rickh, black ink.

It’s too bad the kitchen doesn’t give main courses the same attention. Sometimes you can luck out ordering sea bass with pine nuts and capers and black olive sauce. But on another night the same dish is completely unmemorable. The kitchen does know how to grill a fish, however, offering a twist with diced tomato, cucumbers and basil and a squirt of lemon. But a fatty veal chop is virtually tasteless, saved only by wonderful thick-cut pota toes. Rack of lamb, barely colored.

Desserts are pretty uninspired, too. Moist bread pudding served in a pool of creme anglaise, and a chalky ricotta cheesecake are the best. The pucker of a lemon tart is lost beneath a sticky sweet meringue. Panna cotta is rigid with gelatin. Tiramisu is all whipped cream--not a trace of mascarpone .

The wine list barely has enough good expensive wines on the list; finding a good, moderately priced bottle is even more difficult.

Drago is something of a puzzle. Regulars, who ask Celestino Drago to cook special menus for them, swear by the place. But how these delicious antipasti and lusty pasta dishes can coexist on the same menu with generic, completely unexciting main courses and lackluster desserts is the real mystery. Maybe featuring the better half of the menu at their new Il Pastaios wasn’t such a bad idea, after all. After nearly four years, Drago’s menu is wearing thin. I’d love to see more Sicilian dishes. And more attention given to the execution.

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DRAGO CUISINE: Italian. AMBIENCE: Starkly modern with a lively bar and a high noise level. BEST DISHES: cod cakes, polenta with wild mushrooms, eggplant souffle, seafood spaghetti for two, spaghetti with fresh sardines and fennel, simple grilled fish. WINE PICKS: ’93 Ronco del Gnemiz Tocai and ’89 Monsanto Nemo. FACTS: 2628 Wilshire Blvd.; (310) 828-1585. Closed weekends at lunch. Dinner for two, food only, $40 to $84; Corkage $10. Valet parking.