Menu of Memories

Benito Prezia, who runs Buon Gusto Ristorante in Mission Hills, has overhauled his wine list and added a number of new dishes to his big menu to commemorate the place’s third birthday.

Like everything else on the menu, the new dishes are moderately priced, and they call to mind what Prezia says about his maternal grandmother, the matriarch of a big Italian family and the source of Prezia’s own love of food.

“I learned how to cook from her,” Prezia says. “She had a big house near Siderno in the province of Calabria, on a hill from which you could see the [Ionian] Sea.

“The ventilation was not the greatest--here in America we take so many things for granted--and I remember the smell of the cookies and the breads she baked, so sweet that it made tears come to my eyes.

“And when people come here and they smell the aroma of the kitchen, I tell them: I cannot give you the love of my grandmother--but I can give you food like she gave my family.”

The food includes new dishes named after his father, veal alla Francesco, and his mother, veal alla Mona. The first comes with avocado and fontina cheese in a sauce of Marsala wine, the second with eggplant and fontina in a sauce of Marsala, shallots and butter. Both cost $13.95.

(The menu offers no dish named after Prezia’s grandmother, whom Prezia chose to remember another way. During a recent trip home to Siderno he turned her house on the hill over to the local church, to be used for charitable purposes.)

Also new on the menu: chicken sauteed with slices of sausage in a wine and tomato herb sauce; chicken with artichoke hearts, peppers and black olives in a Chardonnay sauce; chicken cacciatore with peppers, mushrooms, and peppercorns in a wine and tomato sauce; and scampi alla Mediterranea in a white wine sauce of lemon, butter and garlic.

Prezia also serves up a number of new pasta specialties in a variety of vegetable, tomato and cream sauces, and half a dozen seafood dishes featuring either pasta or rice.

Prices run to $11.95 for chicken dishes, $14.50 for veal dishes, $15.50 for steak dishes. Prezia’s new wine list offers no fewer than three Italian and eight California wines by the glass, plus a host of Italian and domestic red and white wines by the bottle.

* Buon Gusto serves lunch Monday through Saturday, brunch on Sunday, and dinner seven nights a week. It is at 15536 Devonshire St., Mission Hills, (818) 893-9985.

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Paolo and Sharon Rosi have completely redone their Encino restaurant Il Casale--even to the point of renaming it Sharon’s Restaurant.

The new menu, like the old, showcases Paolo Rosi’s delight in the cornucopia of seafoods, meats, vegetables, fruits and spices available in Southern California, but at prices topping out at $11.95--a bargain.

Rosi does all his buying personally, and he runs the kitchen too, whence he serves up an eclectic range of dishes reflecting the huge variety of local ingredients touched by the cooking of Rosi’s own Italian heritage.

New to the menu, for example, is Lake Superior whitefish baked with pear, potato, green olives and raisins--inspired by a Sicilian dish originally made with salt cod.

Or you can have Chilean sea bass on a bed of roasted eggplant with tomatoes and chives in a citrus vinaigrette, or salmon on a bed of mashed potatoes with a spicy cilantro vinaigrette, or a dish named after Sharon Rosi herself--light and dark chicken meat with kalamata olives, red and yellow peppers, and mushrooms.

And if you still need convincing that Rosi has to be one of the more inventive chefs in the San Fernando Valley, there’s more on his menu--sauteed boneless lamb served on a bed of mashed potatoes, with olive oil, vinegar, garlic and rosemary; veal scaloppine with a sauce of Marsala wine and fresh figs, with mashed potatoes and baby zucchini; and duck legs with a sauce of balsamic vinegar served over spinach pasta.

Rosi also makes the Italian ices and ice creams on the dessert menu. Sharon Rosi makes all of the restaurant’s other desserts to reflect the seasons--for example, poached fresh plums served with Tahitian vanilla beans and served with a butter cornmeal cake, and, when the variety is available, baked Rome Beauty apples in a rum custard sauce.

* Sharon’s restaurant serves dinner Tuesday through Sunday. It is at 17970 Ventura Blvd., Encino, (818) 344-5788.

* Juan Hovey writes about the restaurant scene in the San Fernando Valley and outlying points. He may be reached at (805) 492-7909 or fax (805) 492-5139 or via e-mail at Jhoveycompuserve.com