Paradiso: Bit of Heaven in Redondo

There’s no sign out front yet, but a new Italian restaurant has slipped into Redondo Beach next door to the sports bar Dante’s Inferno. The partners in Cucina Paradiso are Issac Rivera and Orazio Afrento, two waiters who have been at Drago in Santa Monica since it opened, along with Alex Lombardo, Drago’s opening chef, and his former sous-chef, Craig D’Alessandro, who also headed up Drago’s kitchen at one point. The four seem to be having a great time as proprietors of their first restaurant. And it is quite a serious effort for the beach town.

Arancini, little deep-fried rice balls, taste like the real thing. And now that Lombardo has discovered a good New York source for the fatty, delicious pork sausage cotechino, he serves it sliced as part of an antipasto platter of various cold meats and marinated vegetables. He also smokes his own salmon and the swordfish for the swordfish carpaccio. One of Lombardo’s specialties is a completely boned free-range chicken marinated in olive oil and rosemary and then roasted with potatoes. And he gives classic osso buco alla Milanese his own twist, braising the veal shanks in the traditional vegetables to which he’s added a handful of porcini mushrooms.

And the name, where does it come from? “We liked the film ‘Cinema Paradiso’ a lot, so we said why don’t we call it Cucina Paradiso?” says Afrento, who grew up in Rome. “And it works out because now we’ve got heaven and hell--Cucina Paradiso and Dante’s Inferno--right next to each other.” They also happen to share the same valet parker.

* Cucina Paradiso, 1611 S. Catalina Ave., Suite 150, Redondo Beach , (310) 792-1972. Open Mondays to Fridays for lunch, daily for dinner. Major credit cards accepted. Valet parking. Appetizers $5-$9; pasta and risotto dishes $8-$12.50; entrees $13-$19.50.