Primi Celebrates the South of Italy

For years now, Primi, Piero Selvaggio’s second restaurant (after Valentino, which recently celebrated its 26th birthday) has just perked along: It’s packed at lunch--when it becomes the de facto Fox studio commissary--and a little less busy at night, except on weekends. After an ambitious start in 1985 as a first-course-only grazing restaurant, Primi, which means “first courses,” evolved into a comfortable, middle-of-the-road Italian restaurant, the kind of place for a nice plate of pasta or a decent veal chop.

But with the departure of Primi’s longtime chef, Selvaggio decided that after more than a quarter-century of championing northern Italian cuisine, it was time to explore the vibrant cooking of the south of Italy. He hired Vittorio Lucariello, who had worked with Gino Angelini of Vincenti, and sent the lanky 25-year-old chef to Italy for six months to work in some of the south’s best restaurants, most notably the three-star Don Alfonso near Sorrento.

Lucariello, it turns out, comes from a town only an hour away from there, so he’s familiar with the lightly sauced pastas, exquisitely fresh seafood and intricate sweets of the Naples region. He obviously relished the chance to work in such a renowned kitchen because he’s come back bursting with ideas. During the past few months, he and Selvaggio have introduced more and more southern Italian dishes to Primi’s menu. For Los Angeles, this is a refreshing change from the ubiquitous Tuscan food.

Setting aside Piedmont’s astonishing gold tajerin (a.k.a. tagliolini) and Emilia-Romagna’s richly sauced and stuffed tortellini, no other region cooks pasta with such skill and devotion as Campania. But you have to taste the real thing--true Neapolitan cooking bears little resemblance to the red-sauce Italian-American cuisine we all grew up on. Lucariello makes tomato sauces the way they do it in the south, where intensely flavorful San Marzano tomatoes grown in volcanic soil are pan-seared just long enough to release their juices and shrivel their skins to add a fragrant grace note to the pasta. Here he uses cherry or small Roma tomatoes to the same effect. Just taste the wide tube pasta called paccheri sauced with cubes of Italian sea bass, fresh tomatoes and Ligurian olives. One night, he tosses garganelli with fresh lobster and shreds of tomato. Neapolitan-style lasagna, sheets of pasta layered with a light, basil-scented tomato sauce and set in a pool of molten mozzarella di bufala, is terrific, too.

Instead of the usual basil, garlic and pine nut pesto from Liguria, Lucariello offers pesto Trapanese. It’s a delicious paste of almonds, bread crumbs and basil on spaghetti alla chitarra, pasta cut on strings stretched across a wooden box. There’s an oddly intriguing risotto agli agrumi, laced with segments of lemon, orange and grapefruit and flavored with their mingled juices. I even like the molded rice--not risotto--timbale, stuffed with tiny, fluffy veal meatballs, nuggets of sausage, sauteed mushrooms and fresh peas.

Every meal I’ve had recently at Primi has begun with a stuzzichini, a little something the chef sends out to whet the appetite. One standout is a single seared scallop paired with a shaved fennel salad drenched in orange.

Lucariello’s antipasti are just as beguiling. His fried calamari with zucchini slices in a thin, lacy batter is even lighter than good tempura. Sea bass carpaccio is enhanced with a fragrant lemon emulsion, and a plate of sweet-salty prosciutto di San Daniele is served with fresh ricotta and figs marinated in Barolo. Baked stuffed tomatoes, I admit, don’t sound too enticing, but the ones here are surprisingly good. Baked to concentrate their flavor and then stuffed with roasted sweet peppers, the tomatoes are topped with thin shavings of bottarga di tonno from Sicily.

And instead of a boring carrot puree, Primi’s entry in the nondairy vegetarian category is a smooth puree of fava beans swirled with olive oil and a sprig of fennel. Minestra maritata, a rustic soup of wilted escarole and sliced meats in a flavorful broth, is another good way to start a meal on a winter evening.

As for main courses, you can’t go wrong with striped bass (branzino) all’ acqua pazza--crazy water style--essentially cooked in just enough light broth with a little olive oil and chopped tomato to show off the delicate flavor of the fish. Grilled salmon with lemon and capers is also good, and nightly specials offer more seafood choices. For meat-eaters, I recommend the refined version of braciola Napoletana, thumb-sized rolls of thinly sliced beef filled with pine nuts in a tomato sauce; pork tenderloin in a sumptuous honey and shallot sauce accompanied by earthy green lentils; and New York steak grilled and served in thick slices atop a bed of arugula.

You can also ask the chef to devise an “extravaganza” menu for the table, composed of the dishes and ingredients that most appeal to you. And if you like, sommelier and maitre d’ Donato Poto will pick the wines to match. While Primi’s wine list doesn’t have the extraordinary depth of Valentino’s, it is first-rate and includes not only a broad and interesting Italian selection but also a shrewdly chosen array of California wines--both at attractive prices.

Come dessert, Lucariello puts some unusually sophisticated regional sweets on his menu. First of all, don’t leave without trying the sfogliatella, Napoli’s hand-rolled, clam-shaped puff pastry filled with cinnamon-scented ricotta studded with candied fruit. Lasagnetta, fine layers of pastry stacked with hazelnut panna cotta, is likewise too good to miss. Somebody at the table must get the semifreddo, a semi-frozen nougat confection topped with a latticework of bittersweet chocolate. And cupoletta di melanzane, a dome cloaked in dark chocolate, consists, believe it or not, of layers of sweet pickled eggplant and toasted almonds.

It’s risky to tinker with Primi’s successful formula, but Piero Selvaggio is on to something with this new southern Italian-inflected menu and his talented young chef. How much fagioli and chicken pressed under a brick can a person eat after all?

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PRIMI

CUISINE: Italian. AMBIENCE: Contemporary Italian with open kitchen and marble counter for single diners; adjoining tented patio for parties. BEST DISHES: escarole soup, fried calamari, spaghetti with pesto Trapanese, paccheri with sea bass, Neapolitan lasagna, striped bass in “crazy water,” braciola Napoletana, sfogliatella, almond nougat semifreddo. WINE PICKS: 1995 Anselmi Soave “San Vicenzo,” Veneto; 1995 Fantino-Conterno “Monpra,” Piedmont. FACTS: 10543 Pico Blvd., West Los Angeles; (310) 475-9235. Lunch weekdays and dinner Monday through Saturday. Dinner appetizers, $7 to $11; pasta and risotto, $12 to 14; main courses, $18 to $23. Corkage $10. Valet parking.