Idealist Italian cooking

REDONDO BEACH is home to a new Italian restaurant dedicated to slow food, improbably enough. If you consider how laid-back the town is, then maybe it makes some kind of sense. But it’s also a city that doesn’t have that much experience with authentic Italian cuisine.

Or at least that’s why, I surmise, the waiter at the new Coccole Laboratorio del Gusto (or “laboratory of taste”) feels he needs to explain that they’re using ingredients imported directly from Italy and very different from the usual mozzarella, olive oil and even tomatoes found in the typical Southern California Italian restaurant. I think he’s talking more about the typical beachside Italian restaurant rather than the high-end Italian places in Greater L.A.

Coccole, which means “cuddling,” “snuggling” or “pampering,” is the project of husband and wife Guido Fratesi and Collette Pankopf. He’s the Italian and has worked the front of the house in Italy and in the States. She’s the chef. Though she grew up in Long Beach, she spent years living in Italy, graduated from culinary school and trained at restaurants there. She was later chef at Vin Antico in San Rafael in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The menu, which explains the slow food concept for those unaware of the international food movement that began in Italy’s Piedmont region, is a study in ideals and good intentions. It doesn’t read like any other menu in Greater Los Angeles, and that is refreshing. It features rustic, distinctly regional dishes. To emphasize that everything is made from scratch and cooked to order, a clock face next to some dishes indicates the time it takes to make, anywhere from 15 to 25 minutes.

On a weeknight, the long, skinny storefront is practically filled, with half the room taken up by a multigenerational table celebrating something or other with lots of laughter and toasts. Our waiter is tremendously helpful and enthusiastic, explaining dishes at length, happy to give a taste of the wine he’s recommending, if a bottle is open. Corkage is just $9 if you want to bring your own.

We order a slew of dishes to share from various sections of the menu. There’s a melanzane that avoids the heaviness of most versions -- it just has the taste of thick slices of slow-roasted eggplant in a loose tomato sauce layered with imported mozzarella and Parmigiano-Reggiano. Stuffed zucchini flowers, a special, turn out to be skinny baby zucchini with the flower still attached and stuffed with anchovies and cheese. Delicious. There’s an excellent version of vitello tonnato made with thinly sliced beef napped in a velvety tuna sauce with capers.

The kitchen shines with the pasta course. Gnocchi sfiziosi are potato gnocchi made with some prosciutto cotto (ham) worked into the dough in a sauce that incorporates four cheeses. Rich and satisfying. There’s also lasagnetta alla Norcina, squares of homemade pasta dough layered with house-made sausage, zucchini and other vegetables, and a bechamel sauce, then baked in the oven. Tortelloni anatra are a bit awkward-looking, but the filling is delicious.

A good bet for a main course is the agnello alla griglia, a grilled rack of lamb cut into baby chops and served with Tuscan white beans and a mixed salad. There’s also a pan-roasted duck breast and a beef filet wrapped in pancetta, and a respectable pounded chicken breast marinated in citrus and oregano.

The food tastes fresh and very Italian, but I think the menu may be too large and complicated for such a small restaurant. The one large table that night throws the kitchen off its stride. We wait and wait for a first bite of food, until finally the waiter appears with complimentary crostini with a smear of eggplant. Between courses, we wait a very long time too. This is not just slow, it’s very slow. The kitchen is clearly overwhelmed and either understaffed or not polished enough to turn out so many different dishes when the dining room is full.

Italophiles will need to have patience at Coccole and the time to let them pamper them with some interesting, little-seen dishes. The restaurant is obviously close to the owners’ hearts, and they’ve put it together on a strict budget, decorating it with simple lights, framed photos and a few pieces of antique furniture.

Most touching, as we leave through the bar, I notice they’ve put out books about Tuscany and Venice, as if to explain Italy to people wandering in for a meal. Missionary zeal. You have to love it.

virbila@latimes.com

--

Coccole Laboratorio del Gusto

Where: 320 S. Catalina Ave., Redondo Beach

When: 5 to 10 p.m. Tuesdays through Sundays. Beer and wine. Street parking.

Price: Appetizers, $4.95 to $9.95; pasta, $7.45 to $17.95; main courses, $14.95 to $23.95; desserts, $6 to $6.95.

Info: (310) 374-6929, www.coccoledelgusto.com