First Impressions : Northern Comfort : Pasadena’s new Tre Venezie combines the flavors of three regions in Italy with links to Venice.

Tucked on a quiet block of Green Street in Pasadena’s Old Town, just around the corner from the rollicking Twin Palms, is a new Italian restaurant specializing in the cuisine of Tre Venezie. That’s both the name of the restaurant and the name of the area in northern Italy comprising three regions with ancient links to Venice: the Veneto, Friuli-Venezia Giulia and Trentino-Alto Adige. Venice is famous for its seafood and pasta dishes. Friuli has a strong Austro-Hungarian influence in its cuisine. And Alto Adige is basically hearty mountain cooking. All this makes for a really interesting menu. After all, Italian cuisine is much more than the usual pizza Margherita, angel hair pasta, pesto and chicken cooked under a brick.

Unless you’ve spent some time in the northeast of Italy, many of the dishes at Tre Venezie will be completely unfamiliar, which makes it all the more enjoyable to discover them. To start, there’s a rustic soup of fat brown borlotti beans laced with cauliflower called jota that I remember from Trieste, or a mysterious chilled melon soup garnished with prosciutto. The saltiness of the prosciutto is delicious against the sweet cold of the melon. But what really brought back memories of Friuli was the semolina dumplings stuffed with apricot or prunes, dusted with cinnamon and drizzled with brown butter. It’s not the lightest dish, but it’s absolutely addictive.

I loved, too, a Venetian pasta dish with ribbed tube pasta tossed with spezzatini--little bites of seafood in a beautifully balanced sauce. Ravioli stuffed with beets and fresh ricotta would be equally good if the pasta were more supple. And the thick house-smoked pork chop, grilled and served with a light Gorgonzola sauce and a Vincenza-style condiment of apples and mustard.

Sound good? It is.

BE THERE

Tre Venezie, 119 W. Green St., Pasadena; (626) 795-4455. Open Tuesday through Sunday for dinner only; lunch begins in two or three weeks. Dinner appetizers $6.50 to $9.50; main courses $12 to $21.50. Valet parking.