Italian charm in our own Venice

During the course of a year, I go to so many restaurants where nobody seems to be home, let alone hospitable or welcoming, that it’s a distinct pleasure to find one where the owners are very much there -- seven days a week -- and thrilled to find themselves the proprietors of the restaurant they’ve dreamed about for 15 years. Stefano De Lorenzo, who was a fixture at Il Moro in West Los Angeles, and Antonio Mure, who worked there as a chef and has done stints at Locanda Veneta and, most recently, at Valentino in Las Vegas, can’t quite believe their luck.

When 5 Dudley, the offbeat Venice restaurant at the same address, closed recently, the two Italians stepped right in, hardly changing an inch of the diminutive cafe half a block from Venice Beach. 5 Dudley didn’t have much of a decor. Neither does Piccolo Cipriani, which despite the name has no relation to Harry Cipriani or the perennial watering hole or grand hotel in Venice, Italy. In place of the vintage posters that hung on walls the color of fresh-churned butter, there now are evocative black-and-white photos of Venezia in the 1920s from the Alinari archive in Florence. Plus a sprinkling of the tacky Carnival masks that are now sold at every other shop in the watery city.

The unpretentious setting, along with the owners’ energy and charm, makes Piccolo Cipriani feel very Italian. The small, open kitchen, about the size of a ship’s galley, isn’t anything fancy. But it’s somehow comforting to see behind the scenes: the plates stacked on a shelf, the regiment of wineglasses on the counter. A haze of good smells greets you the minute you walk in the door on a damp foggy night.

“It’s June gloom,” notes De Lorenzo with a shrug. “Just a few more days,” he says optimistically, eyeing the handful of empty sidewalk tables out front. The door opens, and he and the chef shout out, “Buona sera, signori,” in unison in a timbre a sushi chef could envy. Ah, more customers who know the two from Il Moro. Extravagant hugs all round.

Specials that sound special

Whatever you need, De Lorenzo couldn’t be more accommodating or gracious. “Perfetto!” is his response to any and all requests. As the master of ceremonies, he’s congenial and relaxed, happy to recite the specials, which he truly makes sound special. Like the salad of heirloom tomatoes and fresh bufala mozzarella flown in from Naples. There, any mozzarella more than a few hours old is considered over the hill, so even if it made the red-eye, this one would be a day or two old. Nevertheless, it weeps moisture and has the wonderful tenderness and flavor of bufala, or water buffalo, milk.

Another night, there’s a special duck prosciutto as an appetizer. Made in-house, it’s served in thin, overlapping slices like carpaccio, with squiggles of mild Gorgonzola sauce on top.

In the dining room, chef Mure tends to wring his hands like a character out of commedia dell’arte. Much more at home in the kitchen, he has all the deft moves of an experienced line cook used to turning out the food. Lightning quick, he seems to be everywhere at once, tossing the contents of a skillet, shaking drops of water from the pasta, turning a sizzling slab of beef or splashing Marsala into a pan.

He’s very good on pasta. I liked the thick, handmade fettuccine served one night with summer truffles. At the table, he takes a whole knobbly truffle and buries the pasta under the lightly perfumed shavings. There’s a drop of truffle oil in there somewhere too. Tagliatelle sauced in a lamb ragu made with diced lamb cooked with tomato and rosemary is a model of the genre.

Usually, there are a couple of pasta specials too. It may be a veal and spinach ravioli, the pasta so thin and supple you can read the spinach through it, tossed in a little light marinara sauce, and napped the way they do it in Italy, in molten butter and Parmigiano. Sometimes, though, the chef forgets, and embellishes it Italian American-style, with far too much sauce.

The two partners have had the smarts not to just replicate the menu found at the legions of L.A.’s other Italian restaurants. De Lorenzo is proud of the cassunziei all’Ampezzana, for example, pasta stuffed with red beets and tossed in a butter, Parmigiano and poppy seed sauce that hails from his hometown, the fashionable ski resort of Cortina d’Ampezzo. And where else has anybody seen tortelli filled with a mixture of potatoes and figs? It sounds like an odd dish, but it’s actually earthy and delicious, served with a drizzle of butter perfumed with sage and Parmesan.

As is almost always the case on Italian menus, appetizers and first courses hold more interest than the secondi, or main courses. How can a serviceable sliced steak with arugula or veal compete with tender quail cooked in Marsala or the beautiful beef carpaccio, here decorated with a classic mustard-spiked mayonnaise? Perhaps even better is a firm Mediterranean sea bass carpaccio with a sharp, delicious caper sauce.

A couple of main course specials stood out, though: roasted rabbit in a lovely olive sauce and braised veal shank in a subtly nuanced sauce studded with carrots, both served with homey grilled polenta.

A basic wine list

Piccolo Cipriani got off to a shaky start when its beer and wine license was pulled -- something to do with the fact that the washrooms are across the street at the Cadillac Hotel, a moderately priced little inn where Europeans on a budget like to stay. But the owners managed to get it back a couple of weeks ago, and they now have a very basic, mostly Italian wine list that barely fills up one page.

Desserts include the obligatory tiramisu -- less sweet than most, with more mascarpone than cream, and the silky crema di vaniglia pudding with soft caramel sauce that’s one of Il Moro’s classics. Listen up when De Lorenzo mentions pasticciera alla Napoletana. It’s basically a rustic cheesecake made with ricotta dotted with grains of wheat and orange peel that’s dense in texture and flavor. And when cream puffs are available, jump at these little beauties filled with creamy, orange-scented mascarpone. They’re unusual and unusually good.

Whenever I go to Piccolo Cipriani, I tend to see the same faces. Many of them have been hanging out at the spot since it was 5 Dudley, and the new owners are bent on making them happy. Just last week, De Lorenzo and Mure brought back 5 Dudley chef Michael Wilson to cook a tasting menu on Thursday nights that they’ll offer side by side with their Italian dishes.

The neighborhood must be thanking its lucky stars that these two, and not somebody else, have taken over the space.

*

Piccolo Cipriani

Rating: **

Location: 5 Dudley Ave., Venice; (310) 314-3222; fax (310) 314-3330; www.piccolocipriani.com

Ambience: Small, charming Italian restaurant a block off Venice Beach with 10 or so tables, two enthusiastic owners and a kitchen right in the dining room

Service: Warm and personable. Sometimes, the chef delivers the plates himself.

Price: Appetizers, $7.75 to $13.75; pastas, $10.75 to $17.95; main dishes, $16.75 to $24.75; desserts $8

Best dishes: Sauteed mussels in spicy tomato broth, beef carpaccio, sea bass carpaccio, quail in Marsala sauce, tagliatelle with lamb ragu, fettuccine with summer truffles, veal and spinach ravioli, cassunziei all’Ampezzana (pasta stuffed with red beets in a poppy seed sauce), chicken “airline”(butterflied chicken breast), braised veal shank, tiramisu, cream puffs

Wine list: Mostly Italian and still very basic. The restaurant just got its wine and beer license. Corkage $10

Best table: The one in the front corner or, on a warm summer night, one of the sidewalk tables in front

Special features: Thursday night tasting menu from former 5 Dudley chef Michael Wilson

Details: Open 5:30 to 10 p.m. Monday to Thursday; noon to 11 p.m. Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Beer and wine. Parking on the street or in the beach lot at the end of Rose Street, $4.

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.