Survival of the Tastiest in Los Feliz

North Vermont Avenue has a special feel. Some would call it a funky, brooding one, but to me the blocks between Hollywood Boulevard and Franklin Avenue are just an old small-town shopping district that has somehow survived without being rebuilt very much.

It has long had its share of Italian food businesses, though in the last three years the age-old Sarno’s Cafe and Sarno’s Bakery have become a fashionable “Mediterranean-inspired American” place named vermont. As if in compensation, an Italian restaurant that was once on Hyperion Avenue has reemerged here, calling itself Il Capricco on Vermont.

You can tell Il Capriccio by the strings of tiny lights on the plants that border its outdoor dining space. A little less easy to see, and more significant in a neighborhood where parking can get tight, is a narrow driveway a door south of the restaurant, leading to a parking lot in the back. From there you can enter the restaurant through a back door--or walk around and enter from the street, if you have an aversion to hot, musty corridors.

The dining room walls, sponged in pastel shades of orange and green, are punctuated by baroque wall sconces and paintings for sale (after all, we are in Los Feliz here). The tables are topped with butcher paper, and you start out with a basket of breads, often including a very fresh focaccia. The dip is minced parsley in olive oil; if you mean to load some of the parsley on your bread, you might want to squeeze some lemon juice on it.

Among the salads are lattughette --your basic greens in balsamic vinegar except that it’s topped with strips of peeled cucumber--and the house salad, which to some people would be the ideal Caesar: It includes no anchovies but lots of grated cheese. There’s a version of fried calamari, somewhat wide slices of lightly breaded tentacle in marinara sauce. One night there was a special of steamed black mussels. They were kind of small and half a dozen of them didn’t open, but the wine and tomato sauce was wonderfully redolent of garlic.

The house pasta, rigatoni Antonio, is a rather simple idea: large tube pasta tossed with chicken, mushrooms and a bit of brightly flavored tomato sauce. A little more daring is the penne with chunks of lamb and eggplant, which includes more tomato sauce and some melted cheese. The lasagna with meat is a nontraditional version--the sheets of pasta sandwich some ground meat but no ricotta, and your rectangle of lasagna is practically swimming in tomato sauce--but it’s an instantly likable dish. The pasta is quite delicate, and the slightly sweet tomato sauce is thick with crumbled anise sausage.

The meat course dishes are mostly familiar favorites like chicken Marsala (plenty of mushrooms in this version) and New York steak with a red wine sauce. Polenta comes in firm bars with a creamy texture, along with mushrooms, bell peppers, garlicky anise sausage and a winning Marsala sauce with a touch of tomato paste. For the best sauce, you have to order the salmon filet, which is coated in thin slices of eggplant and pan-fried. There’s some kind of magic in its faintly bittersweet, somehow meaty Kalamata olive sauce.

Nightly specials are listed on a whiteboard, and this is where Il Capriccio sometimes stretches out and gets creative; e.g., an appetizer of salmon with a “tabbouleh” made with couscous. I’ve been a little disappointed with one of them. Sea bass with clams and mussels on a bed of linguine involved about five mussels, one clam and maybe a dozen strands of linguine.

All the desserts are good, such as the tiramisu (two layers of chocolate-soaked sponge cake, three of rich cream), the creme brulee (creamy, not too heavy on egg yolk) and the elaborate Sicilian pastry called zuccotto : a dome of sponge cake filled with chocolate mousse (which is apparently dosed with kirsch) topped with more whipped cream.

This is a handy little place for this neighborhood. Unfortunately it lacks a wine license. Bring your own; there’s no corkage.

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Il Capriccio on Vermont, 1757 N. Vermont Ave., Los Feliz. (323) 662-5900. Dinner 5 to 10 p.m. Sundays through Thursdays, 5 to 11 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays. No alcohol. Parking lot in rear. All major cards. Dinner for two, $34 to $60. What to Get: calamari fritti, insalata di casa, salmon, lasagna with meat, polenta, penne with lamb and eggplant, creme brulee, zuccotto.