A rare talent for crudo

Salvatore MARINO is a chef with a mission. And that mission is crudo -- raw, impeccably fresh fish that is the Italian restaurant equivalent of sashimi, in the United States, anyway.

Marino is so impassioned by the idea that, despite cooking every night at his West Los Angeles restaurant, Il Grano, in the early hours of the morning he’s at the Japanese wholesale fish market downtown, where the most dedicated sushi chefs buy their seafood. He’s the only Italian chef I know of to make this effort -- perhaps because he’s the only one in town presenting crudo.

What he finds at the wholesale market shows up on that night’s crudo selection. Listed on the menu as an antipasto, his fantasia di crudo is a selection of raw seafood arranged on a rectangular glass plate. It might include a small perfect Kumamoto oyster, a slice of live Maine scallop, the scallop “lips” or muscle, a bite of Japanese white bass or other fish and, if you’re lucky, a sliver of bluefin tuna.

Each one-bite portion is garnished with delicate olive oil with such a light hand that you can barely detect its presence. A few grains of sea salt and sprigs of micro greens for color: That’s it.

Sashimi aficionados may miss the stronger flavors of shoyu and wasabi. But with crudo, you can really taste the sweet brininess of the raw fish and revel in its freshness.

It’s great with a crisp Soave from the Veneto or a Greco di Tufo from the south of Italy from Il Grano’s sophisticated, largely Italian wine list.

When Marino opened Il Grano in 1997, the then 31-year-old was bursting with ideas, so many he couldn’t handle them all. Stepping out from the shadow of his family’s restaurant, Marino, the red sauce Italian that has reigned for 22 years on Melrose Avenue, he deliriously sampled every trend of modern Italian cuisine. It was a wild and very uneven ride.

I remember him coming to the table and explaining each dish in the greatest detail. Though I wanted to be impressed, too often the dishes, except for the pastas, didn’t live up to their intro. Still, I couldn’t help admiring his energy and enthusiasm: The kid was cooking his heart out, night after night after night.

He had snagged a location on Santa Monica Boulevard, just west of the 405 and across the street from Dolores, the 24-hour coffee shop. But Il Grano itself was brutally unattractive, and Marino didn’t have the money to fix it up.

And so he cooked and slowly garnered a following among friends of the family, assorted Italophiles and wine buffs who would come in with bottles from their cellars and ask him to cook a meal to match.

Now, after almost eight years behind the stoves, he’s been able to redo the interior. Architect Osvaldo Maiozzi has made an astonishing transformation.

The new Il Grano, which debuted several weeks ago, very much looks the part of chic, urban ristorante, with its sophisticated textures and warm palette. There are two choice corner booths at the back, chairs and banquettes covered in butter yellow leather, and handsome Artemide light fixtures.

There’s now a small bar at the front, and another room that can be closed off for small parties. Il Grano underwent one extreme makeover and emerged a swan.

Marino has grown as a chef, too, in these eight years. And nowhere does it show more clearly than in his concept of crudo. If you want more than the regular fantasia di crudo, go with the chef’s tasting menu, which is different every night, depending on Marino’s finds at the market and what he feels like cooking. As each small course arrives from the kitchen, the server announces it with a theatrical flourish.

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Gifts of the sea

One recent chef’s tasting began with a couple of stuzzichini, or amuses. Oxnard sea urchin showed up in its shell, spines and all, with a splash of apple water, which made a subtle fruity contrast to the rich iodine of the sea urchin roe. Then came a bite of Dungeness crabmeat sashed with a slice of cucumber and garnished with a dab of yellow tomato puree. More Asian than Italian in concept, it was delightful. Next came the crudo selection -- Kumamoto oyster, line-caught yellowfin tuna, white bass from Japan and a superb piece of bluefin tuna. It was delicious and very quick work to eat. Fortunately, there was more.

The last crudo treat was wild branzino (Mediterranean striped bass) tartare. Rather than being uniformly chopped, the fish had been julienned in short lengths. A bite-size portion came piled on a small fried cracker that was somehow reminiscent of a cannoli wrapper.

Showing us a diminutive bottle of what looked like very old aceto balsamico, our waiter explained that the fish was seasoned with a touch of this magic elixir. No, it was not aceto balsamico, but anchovies boiled down to a dark, syrupy consistency. Using salted fish to season a dish is as ancient as Rome.

Though the stuff could have been every bit as pungent as Vietnamese fish sauce, the effect was incredibly subtle, adding just enough nuanced saltiness to lift the sweet, rich taste of the fish.

It was interesting how far Marino took the idea of crudo in the tasting menu. I have to say that whenever I’ve dined at Il Grano recently, the best thing has always been the fantasia di crudo, but that was only a single course on the regular menu.

The tasting continued with baby cuttlefish from Japan, fried in a light batter and served only with a wedge of lemon. Bravo, too, for a lovely dish of sliced octopus tentacle and a little wild arugula, the flavors brought into focus by a dab of bitter orange marmalade and orange zest.

The pasta shape from the Naples area called paccheri, somewhat like a wide, flattened tube, is available on the regular menu stuffed with three meats and served in a Neapolitan tomato-based ragu that simmers for hours.

For the chef’s tasting menu, Marino served the paccheri in an emerald wild arugula sauce with a dollop of baccala mantecata -- salt cod whipped with olive oil and pureed potato. Nice, very nice.

The tasting menu was a revelation: a definite level up from my previous meals, which had been, except for a couple of dishes, unimpressive. The exception on the tasting menu that night was house-made sausage, which was painfully salty, with some sliced roasted pork, which was also too salty. The whole plate seemed almost an afterthought, with no conviction behind the concept. The regular menu, though, is still uneven. Marino is strongest on antipasti and pastas, weakest on main courses. The dizzying array of plates and sometimes pretentious presentation are a distraction from the food.

I wish he’d concentrate on the simpler, less contrived dishes -- like that fried cuttlefish with lemon or his marvelous 1 1/2 -inch-wide pappardelle in wild mushroom sauce.

Oh, and the spaghetti I had one night with baby clams and cardoons. Or the black cabbage, spelt and broccoli soup.

He does end the meal on the right note: three flavors of gelato presented on a divided plate, with a spoonful of softly whipped ice cream taking up the fourth segment. The texture of the gelato is perfect, as smooth and luscious as if it had been made just minutes before. None is too sweet, and each is entirely distinct: a toasty hazelnut, a dark chocolate, a zingy licorice.

The contrasts are real, not wishful thinking, and the effect is strong and simple.

In a town obsessed with sushi, crudo may be the next big thing. It involves raw fish. It’s light on the calories. It’s almost pure protein. And it’s very sensual.

It’s not unlike the “new-style” sashimi that Nobu Matsuhisa introduced in the ‘80s. Mario Batali, the first to introduce (if not invent) crudo, has had a big success with the raw seafood at Esca, his midtown Manhattan Italian seafood restaurant.

Marino, the first Italian chef in Los Angeles to run with the crudo idea, is certainly onto something.

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Il Grano

Rating: **

Location: 11359 Santa Monica Blvd., West Los Angeles (just west of the 405); (310) 477-7886

Ambience: Contemporary Italian restaurant with a smart urban look. There’s a small bar at the front and one room off to the side for private parties. The crowd is Italophiles and wine buffs.

Service: Attentive and professional

Price: Dinner: antipasti, $11 to $20; primi, $14 to $19; secondi, $23 to $30; desserts, $9; 5-course tasting menu, $55 per person; 8-course tasting menu, $79 per person. Business lunch (3-course), $16 to $19.

Best dishes: Crudo, octopus with wild arugula, fried cuttlefish with lemon, soup with black cabbage and spelt, spaghetti with clams and cardoons, pappardelle with wild mushrooms, roasted Niman Ranch pork shoulder, gelato.

Wine list: Sophisticated, largely Italian, with lots of choices to match the food. Corkage, $15.

Best table: One of the two corner booths

Details: Open for lunch Monday through Friday from 12 to 3 p.m., and for dinner Monday through Saturday from 5:30 to

10 p.m. Full bar. Free metered parking behind the restaurant after 6 p.m. off Purdue Street.

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.