Still warming to its Italian roots

A golden rule about opening a restaurant is: Never Name It After Yourself. Chez Max loses its resale value when Max sells it, say MBA types. Better to name it L’Escargot. But to the Maxes of the world, the snail’s not doing the cooking. They are. The snail can open its own restaurant.

In the case of Palmeri, a 4-month-old restaurant in Brentwood, Max-logic prevailed. Ottavio Palmeri wanted his name on the window. Given the restaurant’s location this side of Italy, that can be taken as reassuring. If it’s good enough for a native Sicilian, it should be good enough for you and me.

Time will tell. Palmeri has set its standards so high that it hasn’t reached them yet. The formula is bellini-at-lunchtime Italian. There is a polished stone bar overlooking a wood-burning pizza oven. A minimal dining room done out in beige has beautiful modern cutlery, stiff linen and the hard good looks of a room where the only decoration is a sparkling plate-glass window overlooking San Vicente Boulevard, glass-fronted cases displaying Venetian glass grappa bottles and yet more Venetian glass over the ceiling lights.

This hard-edged elegance has the same drawbacks here as in Italy: acoustics so sharp that customers have to shout. This can be embarrassing if the food is less than perfect. Customers end up yelling that their nine-buck salad, six-buck soup and twenty-eight-buck fish are only OK, if that.

The people to watch are the ones not talking. Chances are good that they will be eating something made with flour. The soul of the kitchen is farinaceous. Pizzas for $11 constitute a starter for four. The margherita’s crust is thin and light; the sauce bright. If it could be made better, it would take a pinch of salt and a couple more minutes in the oven. The perfect pizza should be right at the edge of salty and burnt.

There are two other choices beside the margherita, each so resistible it’s as if they were put on the menu to reject: a formaggi with white cheeses dabbed on in disarming lumps, and the fornarina, with mozzarella, prosciutto, arugula, Parmesan and -- please, no -- truffle oil.

Besides pizza, two starters were memorable, a tortelli and a cuttlefish salad. The tortelli, made with delicate, exceptionally good fresh pasta, had been filled with pork cheek and served with a strange greenish sauce (asparagus and baby spinach, according to the menu). The cuttlefish salad with blood orange segments had bold flavor play going on between the squid, with its inky edge, and the fruit.

Dishes that should have been better than they were started with a bar snack, a white lump of goat’s cheese in tomato sauce, served with dull bread. It tasted like Boursin’s Italian cousin.

Soups were disappointing. A fennel and fava bean soup was green, with mealy lumps and a memory of spent aniseed flavor. Minestrone was scalding, but dead tasting; there are better canned versions. There was none of the bright vegetable flavors or suppleness of stock that distinguish a good soup.

In fact, surprisingly for an Italian restaurant, the vegetable cooking here is lamentable. It would seem the person doing it now doesn’t eat vegetables. Who else would turn beets into canister shapes? A beet salad turned out to be a little red citadel of shredded root with a kind of white cheese topping. A side dish, rapini with garlic, olive oil and chili flakes, was sour, with a burn on the finish from the chili.

Here a chronic tendency to under-season causes a problem. Salt is needed to fix the flavor and color in that broccoli cousin. Spinach was fine, though again under salted; roasted potatoes good; grilled asparagus a bit stringy and only fine. Only sauteed peppers had the kind of deep flavor one might associate with Italy.

The flying fish

Mr. PALMERI is proud that the fish he serves is flown in from Europe. The branzino has frequent flier miles. To this eater, Italian fish are best when they are allowed to swim over. Freshness is the prize, and fish to boast about should come from local waters.

In the case of much vaunted orata, a Mediterranean bass, it was no sooner through customs than it was baked, presented whole, taken away and boned, then served on a long, dramatic plate with much needed lemon.

Vegetarians, avert your eyes. This is the meat part. Easily the best main course was the rib-eye beef served on arugula salad with grated Parmesan. It is wonderful seeing meat served in respectful, digestible portions long standard in Europe and rare here.

But if you think the dinky portion for $28 means that “Piemontese” beef is so special that it makes Aberdeen-Angus the equivalent of a clapped out feedlot cow from the Central Valley, think again. Piemontese cattle have their fans, mainly in Italy. In a nutshell, it’s not about the breed. It’s the rearing standards and presentation that we should emulate, eating good beef, less often, more reverently.

But this restaurant is less interested in sustainability, the Slow Food ethos and supporting local producers than it is about impressing clients with goodies. Mr. Palmeri doesn’t serve pork, he says, but Kurobuta pork. Elsewhere on the menu there is Alaskan king salmon, Maine lobster.

Lots of chefs construct menus that read like roll calls of luxury foods. Their job is to keep snobs out of the fun places. If only Mr. Palmeri could see that far and away his best dishes were the humblest: the pizza, the pasta.

The very best dish is, probably not coincidentally, Sicilian. The cannoli. Crisp shells marry flavors of fresh nuts and orange zest. The ricotta filling could not be lighter. Now this is a treat -- spring on a plate. Pastry chefs should come here at least once, if only for this.

Commenting on the service feels unfair. The waiters are all immaculate, charming men who most certainly know that a child should be the first one to be served at a table, not the last, but who couldn’t get it right the nights I dined there.

At a guess, the problems dogging them started in the kitchen, not with their inexperience. This much I can testify: They are kind to the clumsy. A spilled glass of Sicilian red was quickly mopped up with comforting noises, a fresh glass and encouragement to continue eating.

The wines, all recommended by the manager, were affordable and either fine or good. None was inordinately expensive given that the manager could easily have led us up-list.

A crisp, not too alcoholic Italian Pinot Grigio at $8 a glass is a perfect summer drink. For fizz, a Rustico Prosecco by Nino Franco at $29 a bottle is cheap cheer, but hard to finish after the first nose-tickling. Tancredi from Donnafugata is a bit pricey at $50, but good: a gutsy Sicilian red, an herbaceous, deep blend of Cabernet Sauvignon and Nero d’Avola.

The best seats in the house weren’t in the dining room, but at the bar, where diners have a long view of the open-plan kitchen. The heat from the pizza oven becomes intense by 8 p.m., so dress lightly, or come naked.

Right now, it’s too early to draw a conclusion about Palmeri. It could go either way. It could discover the soul and warmth it would need to make it an L.A. landmark, or it could polish its indifference. The prices are fair; in fact they seem a bit low, as if a concession to its newness and an invitation to come give it a try. It seems to know that it needs us to find the humanity behind the name on the window.

*

Palmeri

Rating: *

Location: 11650 San Vicente Blvd., Brentwood, (310) 442-8446

Ambience: Northern League hauteur with nice rustic touches, such as an open-plan kitchen and pizza oven.

Service: Smartly turned out, highly professional Italian waiters

Price: Appetizers, $8 to $16 (lobster salad); pasta, $14 to $20; entrees, $20 to $32; vegetables, $6. A glass of wine and pizza at the bar might cost $25, including a generous tip; three courses, wine and tip more like $60 to $80 per person.

Best dishes: Margherita pizza from a wood-burning oven; kitchen-made fresh pasta dishes: tortelli, tagliatatelle, agnolotti; seafood cuttlefish and blood orange salad; sliced rib-eye served on arugula salad with flaked Parmesan; cannoli.

Wine list: Good house Pinot Grigio, $8 per glass; affordable fizz, Rustico Prosecco, $29 per bottle; gutsy Cabernet Sauvignon blend Sicilian red Tancredi, $50 per bottle and worth it. Corkage, $15.

Best table: Isn’t a table, but a seat at the bar. The corner in the dining room is also very comfortable, but the acoustics are sharp.

Details: Open for lunch 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Saturday, for dinner 5:30 to 11 p.m., seven days. Valet parking, $2 with validation. Beer and wine, only.

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.