Old style with lots of attitude

WHEN it comes to food and wine, $90 can buy you a lot. At Sushi Dokoro Ki Ra La in Beverly Hills, for instance, it buys you a complete omakase (chef’s choice) lunch, including a couple of glasses of Otokoyama junmai sake. At Hatfield’s in Los Angeles, it buys you a three-course market menu for two people. At Sona in West Hollywood, it buys you chef David Myers’ six-course tasting menu.

At Giorgio Baldi, the 16-year-old Italian restaurant in Santa Monica Canyon, $90 buys you one lobster special. Not that anyone is likely to mention the price should you happen to order it, despite the fact that it’s well over twice the price of the most expensive dish on the menu.

“Ninety percent of our customers are Hollywood,” says the waiter when my husband questions the over-the-top bill. “It’s rude to say the price.”

That’s Giorgio Baldi, an old-fashioned spot where it’s too dark to read the menu anyway. A friend one night describes the place with its white tablecloths, candlelight and rickety chairs as “someplace your grandmother would take you.”

Only it’s not a grandmotherly crowd. Seated elbow-to-elbow in the small, nondescript dining room (the tables are so close together, your chair is likely to scrape someone else’s) is a very relaxed show-biz scene -- mostly gorgeous young things in expensive jeans and sweaters. If it weren’t quite so happening, you’d call it cramped. When a suit walks in (didn’t have time to stop home on the way from the studio, honey) he looks more high-level studio exec than up-and-coming agent.

These are the folks who live in and around wealthy Santa Monica Canyon and points north to Malibu. Giorgio’s, as the regulars call it, is their midweek hangout and their weekend fun spot.

Old-fashioned, too, is the long recitation of specials by Italian waiters with thick accents instead of menus printed as dishes change. Even old-fashioned intimidation over the wine list is alive and well at Giorgio’s. Play the wine game correctly or you may get the rube or riffraff treatment.

That’s what happens on my second visit. Although one of my party of three women is a studio insider who’s eaten here often, she isn’t recognized and we’re treated like interlopers. First, I seek our waiter’s help in ordering a bottle of red wine. The list is quite pricey -- there aren’t many interesting reds under $75 a bottle. But I find three Barbera d’Asti selections at $38 and $39 that look like good possibilities, and I ask the waiter which he’d recommend. He shrugs dismissively.

“They’re all the same,” he says. “Really?” I say. “They’re the same?” He shrugs again, then points to another Barbera, one listed at $110. “This one’s good,” he says.

“Well, I didn’t want to spend that much on the wine,” I say, and order a Michele Chiarlo Barbera “Le Orme” at $38.

Apparently to punish us, he now treats us like three gals who have never set foot in a real Italian restaurant. Pastas and risottos, he announces, are not considered main courses at Giorgio’s: They’re small, he says, designed to be a middle course. If he’s trying to make us uncomfortable, he’s certainly succeeded.

I ask about one of the specials, beef carpaccio with white truffles. Do they offer white truffles on any other dishes? Yes, says the waiter, fettuccine, risotto, agnolotti, and he lists a few more. Pressed, he clarifies that the dishes are made with truffle oil; fresh white truffles aren’t in yet.

“Well, I don’t like truffle oil,” I say.

We order antipasti, plus spaghetti bottarga and tortelli di magro, small ravioli filled with ricotta and Swiss chard in a butter-sage sauce. But the waiter steers us -- hard -- to the sweet corn agnolotti special with white truffles.

“But I don’t like truffle oil,” I remind him.

“It’s white truffles,” he says, contradicting himself. The tortelli dish we tried to order is $15, but I don’t want to make a scene by asking the price of the agnolotti, especially after the wine scene. It turns out to be a tiny order of good agnolotti with little chunks of flavorless, preserved white truffle and truffle oil -- $25 for a few bites.

And so it goes. They don’t have the bistecca fiorentina, just as they didn’t when my husband ordered it the previous week. (Print new menus!) When my friend orders risotto with fresh porcini and tomatoes as her entree, the waiter throws her an admonishing look. “I’m vegetarian,” she says defensively. “You don’t have anything else I can eat!” He walks away in a huff.

Another night, a different waiter mocks one of my guests who’s not drinking wine, laughing with disbelief and failing at first to take away the glass.

So although it’s “rude” to mention the prices of specials, it’s apparently not rude to make fun of recovering alcoholics or vegetarians. (Wait -- aren’t there a few of those in Hollywood too?) Nor is it rude, in Giorgio’s world, to charge $2 to split a risotto dish, even when one of the dishes is that $90 lobster.

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The ordering game

FOR my third visit, I decide to play Giorgio’s game, and attempt to order like the regulars must -- with abandon. I ask what kind of aperitifs they have.

“We don’t have aperitifs,” says the waiter, a different one this time. Just one white wine and one red wine by the glass (how old-fashioned!), plus prosecco, so we ask for three glasses of prosecco, which come, after a long wait, in individual screw-top bottles.

We order expensive wine, lots of antipasti, pasta dishes all around, specials for all the main courses. (Mine is Dover sole because once again, there’s no bistecca fiorentina.)

The service this time is fabulous! Whee -- look what happens when you spend so freely and don’t ask any questions!

So how’s the food?

Many dishes are mediocre, most are just acceptable, a few are pretty good.

“Forte-forte” salad, arugula and radicchio with shaved Parmigiano, is dull: the Parmigiano good quality, but the olive oil flat and flavorless. Minestrone di verdura is ordinary.

A burrata special disappoints on two visits; it’s merely a whole burrata cheese plopped unceremoniously on top of thinly sliced supermarket-quality tomatoes -- that is to say, pallid and flavorless. Again, the second-rate olive oil, and not much seasoning. For $18, you’d think they’d seek out the best ingredients. A mixed seafood carpaccio special is dull and under-seasoned. Beef carpaccio with arugula and Parmigiano is better, but oddly, the arugula is shredded into tiny pieces.

Clams in white wine, olive oil and parsley are tasty. Aragosta e fagioli -- Maine lobster chunks sauteed with cannellini beans, parsley and red chili flakes -- is OK, but the sweetness of the lobster meat is obscured by way too much salt. In fact, the night we have that, someone in the kitchen has a very heavy hand with the salt, which also overwhelms a perfectly roasted veal chop. Crespella al salmone is a warm chive and dill crepe topped with subpar (fatty and salty) smoked salmon and sauced with melted butter.

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Dishes done right

PASTA, gnocchi and risotto -- those main course no-nos -- are more reliably good. Bottarga, Sicilian pressed mullet roe, can be overwhelming if not used judiciously, but here al dente strands of spaghetti are coated with just the right amount; it’s very good. Gnocchi are light and lovely, sauced with an excellent, restrained Gorgonzola sauce.

Risotto, done just right on every visit, is delicious with a sauce chock-full of fresh porcini and a little tomato. Risotto with clams, though, is over-salted and weird-tasting. House-made ravioli are very good, whether filled with pumpkin or ricotta, though they tend to be a little heavy with butter sauce.

For main courses, Giorgio does better with fish than with meat (dry veal Milanese, over-salted roast veal chop, nonexistent bistecca). Dover sole meuniere served off the bone is delicate and nicely cooked (but served with overcooked string beans).

As every Westside Hollywood Italian must, Giorgio’s gets right the spigola (the Mediterranean sea bass also known as branzino). It’s simply roasted, and served with a wedge of lemon. But it would benefit much from a drizzle of great quality olive oil, a grinding of black pepper and a sprinkle of fleur de sel.

Because the whole, large one offered as a special gets a little monotonous, a good option is ordering the combo from the menu -- grilled spigola and langostine: That’s delicious, with a big squeeze of lemon. Most of the mains come with wonderful potatoes cut in big dice and roasted.

Desserts are mostly disappointing, sweet and overpriced.

And the lobster special?

Big and boring -- a 2 1/2 pounder, the meat removed, diced and sauteed with not-very-flavorful cherry tomatoes, green onions and chile peppers, then returned to the shell.

What else could you get for that same $90?

You could buy all the ingredients you’d need to make the butter-poached Maine lobster with leeks, pommes maxim and a red beet essence for six people from Thomas Keller’s “The French Laundry Cookbook.” Or, at Guy Savoy Las Vegas (one of the most expensive restaurants in the world), you could order roasted Dover sole with baby chanterelle crust, jus “terre et mer” and sauteed chanterelles. Or you could get a great bottle of vintage Champagne -- a 1996 A. Jacquart & Fils Grand Cru Blanc de Blancs, say -- and drink it while watching the Dodgers in the playoffs.

You decide.

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brenner@latimes.com

S. Irene Virbila is on vacation.

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Il Ristorante di Giorgio Baldi

Rating: half a star

Location: 114 W. Channel Road, Santa Monica; (310) 573-1660; www.giorgiobaldi.com.

Ambience: Intimate, buzzy and show-biz relaxed.

Service: No doubt regulars are treated well here, but for those not known, it ranges from friendly and professional to insulting and careless.

Price: Salads, soups and antipasti, $7 to $25; pastas and risottos, $12 to $25; fish and meat, $16 to $90; desserts, $12 to $15. More expensive specials will be offered soon when fresh white truffles come in.

Best dishes: Spaghetti bottarga; pappardelle porcini; gnocchi with Gorgonzola sauce; combinazione di spigola e langostine.

Wine list: Pricey, with some predictable California bottles, the usual suspects from Champagne and lots of Italian. Restaurant does not permit diners to bring in outside wine.

Best table: The corner banquette.

Details: Open for dinner Tuesdays through Sundays; reservations taken for seatings between 6 and 10 p.m.

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.