The pleasure of a blend

THE two jolly partners from Piccolo, that minuscule Italian ristorante a block from the beach in Venice, have opened a much grander Santa Monica restaurant at Santa Monica Boulevard and 7th Street. Called La Botte -- Italian for “the wine cask” -- the place is literally built around wine.

The floors are old wine cask staves. Wine barrels are set around the room like boulders. And the main design feature is an elaborate wine rack that wraps around two walls.

You might recall seeing the chef, Antonio (Toni) Mure behind the stoves in the small open kitchen at Piccolo. Bandana tied around his head to catch sweat, he cooked with all the energy of a whirling dervish, sometimes even delivering the plates to the tables himself.

At La Botte, he looks like a different person. Resplendent in a spotless white chef’s jacket and long white apron, he moves through the dining room chatting up the guests, while the affable Stefano de Lorenzo directs the dining room as he did at Piccolo.

At La Botte the partners are going for something more upscale, and, as a consequence, the staff is putting on a formality that could be read as pretentious but is probably just nerves and inexperience.

The menu is much more ambitious than Piccolo’s too. And the restaurant is open for lunch weekdays and dinner nightly, a tall order for a new restaurant.

I love the fact that the menu is laced with distinctly regional dishes, such as the house-cured duck prosciutto drizzled with Gorgonzola sauce or the capelletti al Lambrusco, which is a stuffed pasta similar to tortellini floating in a bowl of broth dosed with a dash of Lambrusco wine.

The soups go beyond minestrone. And pastas include black linguine with fresh crab and roasted garlic. Mantova-style pumpkin tortelli come in a melted butter and sage sauce and a classic tagliatelle comes with Bolognese sauce. And right now, of course, they’re offering risotto lavished with shaved white truffles. (For $60, though, ask to see and smell the truffle before you order. If it’s not a great truffle, don’t get it.)

Main courses flirt with both the rustic and the highfalutin. I was happy to see the famous Roman dish coda alla vaccinara -- braised oxtail with polenta, which I hardly ever see on L.A. Italian menus.

Ditto for the house wild boar sausage. My group of four actually fights over who gets to order it, and trades stories about eating boar sausage with stony green lentils in Umbria. This sausage tastes more like mild pork than wild boar, but the cannellini beans that come with it are delicious.

There’s also a roasted veal shank for two; two big guys, I’d say. And for those who equate going out with eating expensive red meat, there’s a filet mignon with Barolo and truffle sauce.

The wine list is large, and La Botte offers a number of wines by the glass. The list, though, has more expensive, older wines from heavy hitters than reasonably priced wines for Italophiles. The Tuscan section, for example, seems a little short on Chianti Classico, though there is one lovely bargain, the 2001 Castello di Farnatella from the Colli Senesi, just outside the Chianti Classico area, for $28.

It’s early days yet, and going from what is essentially a trattoria to a more formal high-end restaurant has got to come with some growing pains. Santa Monica surely deserves one more Italian restaurant. Why should Brentwood get them all?

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La Botte

Where: 620 Santa Monica Blvd., Santa Monica; (310) 576-3072

When: Lunch 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. Mondays through Fridays; dinner 5:30 to 10:30 p.m. daily. Full bar. Valet parking.

Cost: Appetizers, $9 to $16; pastas, $15 to $60; main courses, $24 to $36

Info: (310) 576-3072,

www.LaBotteSantaMonica.com