Tales of Two Trattorias

While my dentist had me in the chair last week, he wanted to ask a burning question: “Why can’t they make pasta here like I just ate all over Italy? Even in the simplest little places, it tastes so wonderful.”

Why not indeed? I think it’s because too many local Italian restaurateurs make too many compromises in a misguided effort to please. Terrorized by what they perceive as their customers’ idea of Italian food, they dish up portions you’d never see in Italy, except perhaps at a farm laborers’ table, and drown the pasta in so much sauce that it hardly matters whether the poor noodle is cooked al dente or not. (Most of the time, it isn’t.) But this, they think, is what people want.

Two mid-priced trattorias in the South Bay area, however, are making an effort to stand out from the crowd. The first is Cafe Piccolo Trattoria in Redondo Beach, which Catello Vanacore moved to a two-story mini-mall from the 20-seat storefront he and his wife, Mary, opened 5 1/2 years ago. If the new place is a trattoria, then it’s a very fancy one, with a pianist most nights, white tablecloths and attentive service. The crew in the open kitchen is outfitted in tall chef’s hats. And, on the counter, flats of fist-sized porcini, ruffled chanterelles and fat green figs invite customers to order something special with these handsome ingredients.

Vanacore was born in Sorrento, on the Amalfi Coast south of Naples, and his menu has an appealing southern Italian bent. It starts with a flurry of antipasti, including a terrific mozzarella in carrozza, triangles of deep-fried, golden-crusted mozzarella set down in a light tomato sauce studded with capers and draped with anchovies. The milky cheese shows up again with grilled sweet peppers, anchovies and capers. Vanacore’s pizzas, too, are pretty true to their Italian counterparts, baked in a ferociously hot wood-burning oven and not overloaded with ingredients. La Rustichella is topped with Italian sausage, tomato, mozzarella--and a little arugula. La Capricciosa is scattered with artichoke hearts and mozzarella. I wish the prosciutto on it were better and sliced thinner, though.

Around L.A., soups of the day are vegetable purees with no butter and no cream. Cafe Piccolo’s soups are purees, too, but they’re astonishingly rich in flavor. Asparagus soup, for example, offers a real jolt of fresh asparagus sumptuously swirled with mascarpone. The chef’s garden salad, the juicy and delicious L’Ortolana, is a plate of fragile, just-picked organic greens (some from Vanacore’s home garden), olives and nuggets of goat cheese in a superbly balanced olive oil-and-vinegar dressing.

Later, I go straight for the spaghetti with bottarga and anchovies. Properly al dente, it is topped with credit-card-size shavings of pressed and dried tuna roe from Sicily. When Vanacore makes mushroom sauce for fettuccine, he doesn’t stint on the chanterelles. Linguine with clams, though, is a bit oily because, to compensate for the clams’ lack of taste, he’s added too much olive oil. He’s on surer ground with dishes such as seared tuna with olives and capers or salmon in lemon caper sauce. But hold the pesce al brodetto, a seafood stew cooked with tomatoes and tarragon and ladled over spaghetti; none of it tastes very distinctive. Nor am I enamored of the meat and poultry dishes, most of which seem to come from the hotel-restaurant repertoire you could find anywhere in the world.

Desserts are surprising and different. There’s an unusual and wonderful ricotta cheesecake dotted with soft wheat berries cooked in milk and vanilla bean that resembles a substantial cheesecake with a buttery pastry crust. It’s an old Neapolitan Easter recipe, Vanacore explains. He also makes excellent ices and gelati. Watch for fichi d’India, or cactus fruit, ice.

As we trail outside, Vanacore shows off the potted fig tree on the terrace that produced 42 figs last year. “I grow all my own herbs, too,” he says proudly, plucking some lemon basil, oregano and rosemary for a small bouquet. What a pleasure to come across an Italian chef still passionate about food after more than 40 years in the business.

The other new and noteworthy South Bay Italian restaurant is Fabio Trattoria in Hermosa Beach. Chef-owner Fabio Flagiello, who used to cook at Chianti on Melrose Avenue, has turned up at this corner brick building decorated with sponged ochre walls, rusting metal “antiques” and windows thrown open to the sea breeze. It’s the kind of rollicking place where people come to celebrate a birthday or have dinner with their neighbors and kids. One night, a small towheaded boy bangs spoons together--an enthusiastic diner or a rock drummer in the making?

From the menu, you’d never guess that after leaving Chianti, Flagiello once created quite a splash at Capri in Venice, where he was known for his cutting-edge Italian cooking. I’m hoping he’s just starting modestly here before showing the South Bay all that he can do. In any case, he offers pleasantly generic Italian food: lasagne alla bolognese, boneless wood-roasted chicken, osso buco.

On a first visit, that enticing golden focaccia turns out to be stale and greasy. Before we can grumble too much about the bread, though, here comes our waiter bearing the antipasti selection on a long wooden tray fitted with bowls. Balancing the whole thing aloft, he sets down two tall Roma tomato tins to support the groaning board. This is a real feast: wonderful sweet-sour balsamic baby onions that still have some crunch, bocconcino mozzarella with cherry tomatoes and olive oil and basil, nutty baked mushrooms with plenty of garlic, roasted tomatoes, zucchini slices rolled around creamy goat cheese. Only the bland calamari salad disappoints.

As for pasta, there’s a fine version of amatriciana, but in the American fashion, the kitchen has gone overboard with the crisped pancetta, adding enough for three portions. Linguine tossed in a light tomato sauce with mixed seafood is quite good, too. But I’m mystified by the pork chop in a sweet, gluey onion “soup”; the grilled bread that accompanies it should be more rustic in style, not a fine-crumbed white bread. One bite of osso buco and I understand why all three people at the table behind me are wolfing it down. The veal shank is tender and delicious, almost falling off the bone into a cushion of soft polenta drenched in robust meat juices. This has got to be the best thing on the menu.

Desserts rate a close second: a fluffy ricotta cheesecake, a crema with a burnt-sugar crust and raspberries buried in the vanilla custard, and paradiso di cioccolato, a flourless chocolate cake that resembles a ramekin of the deepest, darkest fudge.

Though Flagiello’s menu lacks ambition, it does provide the kind of simple, rustic Italian cooking that tastes just right by the beach. So does Cafe Piccolo Trattoria. To their credit, both restaurants try hard to please their customers. Fortunately, they also serve food for those who crave an authentic taste of Italy.

Cafe Piccolo Trattoria

403 N. Pacific Coast Highway, Redondo Beach; (310) 798-4688. Dinner daily; lunch Tuesday through Friday. BEST DISHES: mozzarella in carrozza, pizzas, soups, insalata L’Ortolana, linguine with bottarga, gelati, ricotta cheesecake. Antipasti, $5 to $8; pizzas and pastas, $9 to $15; main courses, $15 to $22. Corkage $10. Lot parking.

Fabio Trattoria

2700 Manhattan Ave., Hermosa Beach; (310) 318-1556. Dinner daily; lunch weekdays. BEST DISHES: Antipasti, pennette all’amatriciana, linguine ai crostacei, osso buco, crema, paradiso di cioccolato. Antipasti, $3 to $13; pizzas and pastas, $7 to $23; secondi, $12 to $17. Corkage $12. Valet parking.