Changing His Tune

It’s an unfortunate fact of life that most of the serious restaurants in the L.A. area are concentrated on the Westside. Despite that, Joachim Splichal, one of L.A.’s best-known entrepreneur-chefs, doesn’t have a single restaurant there.

The one restaurant the German-born, French-trained chef did open on the Westside, Max au Triangle in Beverly Hills, failed. Then came Patina (which is celebrating its 13th birthday this year) and a host of Patina and Pinot spinoffs. Splichal recently opened his eighth restaurant downtown, two blocks from Staples Center, called Zucca. That’s his eighth restaurant downtown, not his eighth restaurant. And this time it’s Italian, not French.

When I say Splichal, I mean the Patina Group, which was bought by the New York-based Restaurant Associates in 1999. However, Splichal and his wife and partner, Christine, still run the group of 22 restaurants, most of which are in Los Angeles. The Splichals have a talent for creating a fun and lively ambience--think Cafe Pinot next to the main library downtown, the martini bar at Pinot Hollywood, or the first Pinot, still going strong: Pinot Bistro in Studio City.

Zucca, in keeping with its Italian theme, looks the part of a big city ristorante. Occupying the bottom of an office building at 8th Street and South Figueroa, it’s one of the few downtown L.A. restaurants that has a presence on the street. Cafe curtains screen the diners, but the milky Venetian glass chandeliers, red silk lampshades and colorful, hand-painted majolica platters and vases in the windows telegraph the new restaurant to passers-by.

At the entrance, ottoman-size wheels of Parmigiano-Reggiano peek out from a display window. Past the heavy brass-trimmed doors, the first thing a guest sees is the fire of the wood-burning pizza oven. Next to it, an antique wooden cabinet shows off Zucca’s signature handmade biscotti.

At lunch and at dinner, the latter when most of downtown is often dead, Zucca is full of life, every table filled, a throng at the bar. The place looks as if it has been here forever, even though it’s only 5 months old. That may be because the Splichals hauled much of the decor straight from Italy, such as the trio of Murano glass chandeliers, or the floor, which the waiter tells me was lifted from an abandoned Tuscan villa. On the walls, in San Francisco painter Charley Brown’s scenes of Carnival in Venice, masked figures in a swirl of black capes dance above the glamorous butter-yellow banquettes.

Waiters are dressed in crisp white jackets embroidered with ZUCCA. The word has a nice fat sound. It’s Italian for pumpkin, a theme that recurs throughout the menu.

A new manager, who is French and fresh from his last posting in Dubai, dishes out the risotto of the day--radicchio with quail. The glaze is delicious, aceto balsamico with Barolo and some rosemary.

The best appetizer is uncooked, which says something about the kitchen headed by executive chef Giancarlo Gottardo. This dish is a platter of thinly sliced rustic salame and supple prosciutto di Parma. Another time, the soup of the day is a lovely potato with saffron, zucchini and ribbons of squash blossom.

Pizzetta di zucca is a little pizza smeared with roasted red winter pumpkin (there’s that zucca), goat cheese and caramelized onion. It’s not much of a success. And what’s this mystery appetizer? It’s seared scallops perched on a bruschetta of toast spread with roasted eggplant. How are you supposed to eat this misconceived dish? You can’t exactly pick it up and take bites out of the hefty scallop.

Plating tends to look messy, with too much sauce, too many ingredients. It’s as if cafeteria cooks were asked to perform in a professional kitchen. The model is all wrong. Fritto misto, for example, offers hunks of broccoli florets, asparagus, green beans and julienned zucchini in a thick, somewhat greasy batter. The sauce, oddly, is a garbanzo dip. Heavy and heavier. For one salad, baby artichokes and diced tomatoes are turned out of a mold and topped with two huge seared scallops. It’s not a pretty picture.

At lunch, panzanella, or Tuscan bread salad, is made with croutons instead of torn stale bread soaked in water. This is a dish that only works if it’s made with top-quality ingredients--peppery green-gold olive oil, ripe tomatoes, cucumbers and fragrant sweet basil--which is not the case here. Nothing sings in the salad of grilled shrimp with white beans, aceto balsamico and arugula. The sweetness of the aceto doesn’t do a thing for the beans. Starchy and bland, they need something more refreshing and acidic, such as red wine vinegar or lemon.

Pastas tend to be oversauced. Sardinian “gnochetti,” a ribbed shell pasta tossed in a sausage rag laced with fennel and topped with pungent pecorino, is a hearty and sloppy dish that will put hair on your chest. The best of the pastas I tried was the linguine alle vongole, made with tiny clams in the shell. It has a nice balance of garlic and white wine to olive oil.

Among the stuffed pasta dishes, panzerotti would be a light and satisfying dish if the kitchen cut down on the amount of tomato heaped on top. It features little packets of dough stuffed with mozzarella in a plain marinara of diced plum tomatoes. One day at lunch, I headed straight for the ravioli filled with ricotta and spinach in an artichoke ragout. But I can tell before I take a bite that the pasta is too thick and stiff as cardboard. The filling is delicious, though, when you can taste it through the sauce. When the waiter proffers “Parmesan,” to Zucca’s credit, it’s a hunk of that Parmigiano-Reggiano freshly grated over your plate.

But how to explain Zucca’s signature pumpkin tortellini? They’re huge, clumsy things, as big as quail and stuffed to bursting with roasted pumpkin the texture of baby food.

But, I have to say, branzino, or striped bass, roasted in the wood-burning oven, is one of the better versions I’ve had. It’s firm and has some flavor, in short a fish you’d want to meet. A halibut special, though, is curiously bland. Nobody at the table attempts to finish it.

That wood-burning oven is responsible for the fine bistecca--T-bone steak for two served with chard and wild mushrooms. Downtown, this one dish is enough to put the place on the map. The rotisserie also turns out a fine arista (roasted pork loin) that’s pink and juicy, basically a loin roast on the bone three fingers high. Why this nice piece of pork is sitting on acrid and salty braised cabbage is puzzling. Why the kitchen thinks a dark transparent veal reduction the color of varnish is more Italian than the pork’s natural juices, I have no idea.

Any of the meats from the wood-burning oven or rotisserie are an excuse to pop open a Chianti Classico or Brunello. In putting the wine list together, Patina sommelier Chris Meeske has done his homework. Along with the well-known and ever more pricey heavy-hitters such as Gaja or Castello di Ama are wines from rising young producers or lesser-known wine regions.

As for dessert, order the

panna cotta, or Piedmontese “cooked cream.” It tastes as it should: barely sweetened cream, though with a touch too much gelatin, and is surrounded by a deep stain of strawberries and raspberries. Zabaglione, that seductive froth of egg yolks, sugar and Marsala, is served as a gratin with a kind of bruleed sugar crust on top, which adds interest to the texture. But mixing berries in with the zabaglione may not have been the best idea: You no longer get the ravishing contrast of warm zabaglione and cool berries.

For those with a real sweet tooth, there’s a ricotta cheesecake wrapped in pale green marzipan. If you want to end with pumpkin, get the caramel pumpkin gelato.

After several meals at Zucca, I’m left wondering why Splichal went Italian--probably not to compete with his other downtown restaurants, among them the French Cafe Pinot or the steakhouse Nick & Stef’s. I’d have expected better from this experienced chef and restaurateur.

Zucca Ristorante

801 S. Figueroa St.

Los Angeles

(213) 614-7800

Cuisine: Italian

Rating: *

AMBIENCE: Sophisticated city Italian with handsome bar and outdoor patio.

SERVICE: Crisp and professional.

BEST DISHES: Platter of cold cuts, Sardinian “gnochetti,” roasted branzino, bistecca alla Fiorentina, arista, panna cotta. Appetizers, $6 to $13. Pastas, $12 to $18. Main courses, $13 to $26. Corkage, $12.

WINE PICKS: 1999 Benito Ferrara Greco di Tufo Riserva Cicogna, Campania, Italy; 2000 Vietti Barbera d’Alba Tre Vigne, Piedmont, Italy.

FACTS: Dinner Monday to Saturday. Lunch weekdays. Valet parking. Rating is based on food, service and ambience, with price taken into account in relation to quality. ****: Outstanding on every level. ***: Excellent. **: Very good. *: Good. No star: Poor to satisfactory.