Flavors at Florence Flourish

The trouble started with the appetizers.

After tasting ravioli dell’aragosta, my guests wanted to have them again as an entree. I had to remind my so-called friends that we had a reviewing job to do here.

We were at Florence Italian Cuisine, formerly Milano’s in Irvine’s Heritage Plaza. Owners Mike and Fera Hashemi have owned it for 1 1/2 years, though they didn’t change the name and menu until November, when renovations were completed.

In fact, being Italian is about all the new restaurant has in common with the old one, and the interior is quite a surprise. The ceiling has been raised to the stratosphere, and what might have been an overwhelmingly cavernous space has been artfully broken up with Florentine arches and columns. A thick, red-gold carpet gives warmth, and the comfortably padded chairs and refrigerator-white tablecloths add a bit of elegance, if not quite formality. Basically, Florence has an easygoing ambience.

As for the ravioli dell’aragosta, my friends eventually consented to order other things, but I couldn’t blame them for falling into a sort of trance over those crescent-shaped lobster ravioli in an earthy lobster cream sauce spiked with chunks of asparagus and tomato. It really is one of those dishes that can short-circuit your ability to even conceptualize any other food.

But we were just getting started. The sprawling menu covers a range of cooking styles, with a notable emphasis on seafood, and its high points are impressive. Much of the kitchen’s success derives from first-rate ingredients, as evidenced by the succulent, fleshy prosciutto di Parma, which that wraps intensely flavorful wedges of cantaloupe in the classic prosciutto-and-melon appetizer.

Antipasto Firenze is a generous platter of Genoa salami, prosciutto and Kalamata olives, along with a variety of grilled and marinated vegetables dressed in a balsamic vinaigrette. The calamari fritti, though perhaps an over-familiar choice, are crisp, nicely breaded, not oily and come with a tangy marinara sauce. The only really disappointing antipasto is the carpaccio. The thinly sliced raw veal is attractively sprinkled with Italian salt-cured capers and thinly shaved Parmesan, but it’s pretty bland, and the mild lemon-herb dressing doesn’t save it.

There are nine pizzas on the menu, and I can attest that the pizza Margherita alla checca, with its simple topping of tomatoes, garlic, basil and very fresh mozzarella, is excellent. When you bite into the medium-thick crust, you find crispness yielding to an attractive chewy texture. The warm Roma tomato slices explode with juice when you bite in, and the basil adds a satisfying high note.

When it comes to entrees, the choices are many and the best dishes can be stunning. The restaurant makes some of its pasta and gets the rest fresh daily from a local purveyor; both are excellent. The homemade pasta particularly shines in the lasagna: five layers of paper-thin pasta interspersed with herbed meat sauce, bechamel sauce and Parmesan and ricotta cheeses, served on a puddle of tomato cream sauce. It cuts like butter.

An interesting dish called linguine vongole shows why the restaurant sends out for some of its pasta. The menu lists this as “black and white linguine,” which I assumed would be a mixture of two kinds of linguine. To my surprise, white pasta and pasta dyed black with squid ink were miraculously fused in every strand, for a visually dazzling effect. It was tossed with a tasty, though not quite exciting, melange of clams, garlic, basil, tomato and white wine.

Filet mignon is available as a regular menu item and also figures in various specials. One of them is frutti filetto, a nice piece of steak served in highly reduced meat juices with baby shrimp and scallops. The seafood and demi-glaze sauce were fine, but this piece of beef really needed nothing to dress it up. Beneath its garlicky crust it was supremely tender, weeping with juice.

Vitello alla Marsala is veal scaloppine in a sweet wine sauce fortified with mushrooms and garlic. It’s quite good, though the taste of the veal does blur somewhat beneath the highly flavored sauce. Another delectable item is the mezzo pollo de funghi, a tender roasted half-chicken whose flavor stands up better against the same Marsala sauce. One of the stranger entrees is tonno sfincione, a slab (it’s named for a sort of flatbread) of over-baked ahi tuna saddled with marinara sauce and mozzarella, with no evidence of the advertised herbed bread tapenade.

The wine list is almost as wide-ranging as the menu, as impressive for its price range as for its breadth. A number of soft Chiantis and Tuscan reds are offered at reasonable prices, along with a good selection of California wines. Florence is a good place to explore Italian wines.

Save room for dessert. The tiramisu is very good, firm ladyfinger cakes holding their texture beautifully against the Marsala and mascarpone cheese.

Florence is medium to expensive. Lunch runs $6.95-$12.95. At dinner, antipasti are $5.50- $9.95, entrees $8.95-$19.95.

BE THERE

Florence Italian Cuisine, 14210 Culver Drive (Heritage Plaza), Irvine. (949) 857-8265. Lunch daily, 11:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m.; dinner daily, 2:30-9 p.m.; champagne brunch, Sunday, 10:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m. ($17.95 for adults, $9.95 children 10 and younger).