The Real Thing

HOW CAN ONE OF THE WORLD’S GREAT CUISINES be reduced to two dozen predictable dishes? Easily. Look at the unimaginative similarities on the menus of most Italian restaurants: pizza spaghetti alla Mecca ravish quattro termagant, risotto with truffles, tiramisu, and so on. just when you think no one will break out of the rut, Trattoria Tre Venezie comes along with authentically regional Italian cooking.

The name of this new Pasadena trattoria refers to three regions in northeastern Italy-the Veneto, Venezie Tre Giulie (Friuli) and Trentino-Alto Adige. Trattoria Tre Venezie even looks like a typical restaurant from that area, with its whitewashed walls, dark wood beams and vintage Italian advertising posters. The wines are stacked simply on a few shelves behind the tables, just as they would be there. At the back, a bookshelf holds cookbooks in Italian. On the menu, I recognized some of the unusual dishes I’d encountered traveling in that part of Italy.

It’s a region with a strong Austrian-Hungarian influence in its cooking. One sees it in the jota, a soup of fat brown borlotti beans laced with cabbage. It’s an oddly appealing combination, even better with a little freshly ground black pepper and a swirl of extra-virgin olive oil. This version tastes very close to what I remember eating at Bohan, the famous old Trieste restaurant.

A dish that immediately catches my eye is semolina dumplings, sumptuous pockets of semolina dough folded around a filling-either dried plums (susina) or apricots--lightly dusted with cinnamon and drizzled with brown butter. It’s absolutely faithful to the original. One night a special appetizer is braised lamb pate with cornichons. Sliced, it comes with nicely dressed salad greens showered with julienned pickle. A soothing chilled melon soup plays the melon’s delicate sweetness against the saltiness of roasted prosciutto. Friuli is home to prosciuto (if San Daniele, which rivals the famed cured meats of Parma.

If you like salads, you’ll find at least two here to please. In one, emerald spinach leaves are tossed in a ginger dressing with steamed shrimp and sliced mushrooms. In another, spinach is garnished with fresh walnuts, toasted pine nuts, slivers of pink pickled onions and raisins for a very Venetian touch. The one appetizer I didn’t appreciate as much was the hot antipasti of thinly sliced salame, sauteed portabello mushrooms and ribbons of ruby-streaked radicchio. Maybe it was the quality of the salame.

The pastas are exotic-sounding, too. Ravioli di rape rosse are plumped with a wonderfully seasoned ricotta filling, topped with julienned beets and drizzled with butter. The pasta casing, though, is sometimes not as supple as it should be. spezzatini with pressed Venetian noodles is fat, ribbed tube pasta gently tossed with seafood--mussels, scallops, dams, salmon and other fish-cooked in a light, wine-enriched broth. The pasta is beautifully al dente, a marvelous dish that tastes absolutely Italian in its balance and true, clean flavors.

I also found the spaghetti alle vongole verace of my dreams here. Served in a smallish bowl with a wide rim, it’s meant to only be a first course. The spaghetti is tossed with clams steamed in white wine and garlic-the smallest clams the chef could find, the kind you might find sold in mesh net bags at the Rialto market in Venice-and a handful of fresh peas. The chef makes his Kigali, a Venetian pasta with a diameter just slightly larger than spaghetti, fresh every morning. It’s sauced with fresh crab meat that is shredded and mixed generously with the pasta, along with garlic and a little parsley.

By the second course, things can sometimes get pretty boring in Italian restaurants. Not here. Try the boreto alla Gradese, a fish dish from Friuli. The fish of the day (snapper, striped bass or halibut) is cooked in hot oil with garlic and vinegar and served atop golden polenta, the whole thing seasoned with cracked black pepper. The other dish I could eat again and again is the fegatini. Bite-sized pieces of chicken liver are sauteed with onions in passito, a sweet white wine made from semi-dried grapes. The sauce is poised on the edge of sweet. and savory, and I’ve never had chicken. livers so perfectly cooked.

Now that winter is here, dig into the hefty house-smoked pork chop, grilled until it’s just a touch pink at the center, sliced on the bone and served in a rich Gorgonzola sauce with a dollop of apple mostarda from Vicenza. The steak in mustard sauce is quite good, too.

One night Maria Liana Sciolis, one of the three owners, stops by our table and describes how she had always dreamed of coming to America and opening a restaurant with her friends. The dream came together four years ago, when she was picked in an immigration lottery, entitling her to a green card. Her husband and son weren’t enthusiastic at first, but they eventually came around when Gianfranco Minuz--a long-time friend and respected chef agreed to come on board. Having three partners is an advantage because at least two seem to be on the premises at any time. It gives Tre Venezia, which opened last August, a very personal feel. They also step in to smooth over the periodic lapses in service.

The wine list was put together with the advice of a friend who lives in the Veneto, and while he does make some interesting suggestions for wine and food pairings, the list omits some of the best winemakers from the Veneto, Friuli and Alto Adige. Perhaps it’s because the owners are still so new to Southern California that they haven’t yet realized the breadth of Italian wines available here.

That Austro-Hungarian heritage shows up in the desserts, too. The apple strudel, which is hand-made, is served warm, all the better to savor its flavors. Venice is no slouch either: After all, tiramisu hails from those parts. Crema del gondoliers is a divinely Venetian version of creme brulee covered with toasted sliced almonds.

It’s obvious that when Sciolis and her colleagues thought about opening Tre Venezie, they decided to make it really Italian, even if nobody came. Not to worry. I’m betting L.A. has enough true Italophiles to fill this sweet Pasadena restaurant night after night.

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AMBIENCE: Cozy and cloistered, with a small side garden room and tiny bar at the front. SERVICE: Warm and personable, if sometimes distracted. BEST DISHES: jota, steamed shrimp and spinach salad, semolina dumplings, spezzatini with seafood, boreto alla Genoese, smoked pork chop, chicken liver and chicken breast in passito wine, apple strudel, crema del gondoliers. Appetizers, $7 to $10; main courses, $13 to $24. Corkage, $15. WINE PICKS: 1997 Teruzzi a Puthod Vernacchia San Gimignano, Tuscany; 1996 Icardi Barbera d’Alba “Suri di Mu,” Piedmont. FACTS: Open Tuesday through Sunday for dinner, Tuesday through Friday for lunch.