At V-vin bar, you can have a taste of Valentino’s without any reservations

It’s always an event dining at Valentino, Piero Selvaggio’s venerable -- and formal -- Italian restaurant in Santa Monica. Make a reservation, dress to the nines, head on over and you’ll spend a few hours and a considerable chunk of dough -- dinner with wine for two can easily top $400.

But the opening of Valentino’s new wine bar two weeks ago means now you can check out chef de cuisine Giacomo Pettinari’s sophisticated cooking without spending a fortune.

Meet friends for a glass of wine and a quick snack, or order a parade of tastes -- either way, you’ll relax in a lively, warm, mahogany-accented bar rather than being cooped up in a stodgy old dining room.

Sit at one of the high tables in V-vin bar (yes, it’s an odd name), order a crisp, aromatic white -- maybe the Lis Neris Confini from Friuli -- and let the bar snacks begin. Start with frico -- lacy, tender-crisp Parmesan wafers -- or wonderful, lemony marinated olives. A gleaming pair of sardoni -- Italian sardines -- hides a little salad of roasted red peppers and mozzarella. Lovers of fried calamari will go for calamaretti e bianchetti fritti -- crisply fried baby squid and tiny white fish that come spilling out of a cone.

There’s only one crudo on the menu now -- raw tuna with colatura di alici (the free-run juice of salted anchovies). But last week a new chef with serious crudo cred arrived to take charge of the wine bar. Born in Tokoshima, near Osaka, Japan, Tako Tabuchi has been making a splash in some of Italy’s best coastal restaurants, cooking at Torre del Saraceno on the Amalfi Coast and Moreno Cedroni’s renowned Madonnina del Pescatore in Senigallia.

On Wednesday, he was offering a crudo special -- fennel-marinated salmon with a velvety, gravlax-like texture and colatura-scented tuna tartare topped with a frizzle of shredded raw carrot. It’s decidedly crudo, not sashimi, but Tabuchi treats the fish with a reverence befitting a Japanese chef. It’ll be interesting to see what he turns out as he expands the crudo offerings.

Ah, here comes a waiter wheeling over the cunning wooden wine cart. Time to switch to red! Besides wine by the glass and by the bottle, you can opt for a quartino, a 250 ml pitcher that’s equal to a third of a bottle, great for two people if you want to taste two or three different wines.

But no need to go high-end; there’s a lovely $7 glass of Ca’ del Vispo Chianti Colli Sensi that goes great with trippa alla romana e pecorino -- small, round tripe and perocino ravioli with wonderfully delicate pasta -- or the eggplant, mozzarella and pepper terrine with a velvety pesto sauce.

There’s also culatello, the prized ham from a cut high on the pig’s leg that’s rubbed with a marinade of wine, salt and sugar then cured in a pig’s bladder. It’s exquisite.

If you’re still hungry, you can also order anything off Valentino’s regular menu. Vitello tonnato, anyone?

-- brenner@latimes.com

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V-VIN BAR

WHERE: 3115 Pico Blvd., Santa Monica

WHEN: 5 p.m. to midnight Mondays through Thursdays; 11:30 a.m. to midnight Fridays; 5 p.m. to midnight Saturdays

PRICE: Small plates, $5 to 19; big platter of salumi and antipasti, $25; wines, $7 to $50 per glass. Full bar. Valet parking

INFO: (310) 829-4313; www.valentinorestaurantgroup.com