RESTAURANT REVIEW : 3rd Visit’s the Charm in Getting Full Flavor of Zio’s

One of my sources called recently. “I’ve got a restaurant,” she said. “It’s . . . well, different. . . . But it has a great beet salad, and there will be plenty to write about; you’ll see.”

And, indeed, see I did. For there, at Zio’s and Company, towering from thickly planted table tops, is an entire population of larger-than-life papier-mache figures: Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben, a pennant-waving Mets fan, girl twins and a couple that one friend dubs Sid and Nancy.

They’re awfully peculiar, these figures--elongated and exaggerated of feature, stiff in posture, dressed in dusty items of clothing--and they take up a lot of space. We’re certainly glad we made reservations on a Friday night for those tables allotted to flesh-and-blood customers are rapidly filled.

“They could sure do a lot more business here if they got rid of those things,” said one dinner companion.

Maybe. But the art-clogged room and the particular home-cooked, garlic-rich abundance in the cooking are Zio’s signatures, the key to its atmosphere and clues to the kind of customers that it seeks to attract: relaxed, arty, intelligent, hip and lively.

Without the sculpture, Zio’s would be yet another Sherman Oaks Italian cucina /imported food market, bigger and hipper, although less cozy, than Il Tiramisu; plainer and hipper and cozier than Lombardo’s, older and more established than either.

I find Zio’s atmosphere comfortable and familiar. It reminds me of the restaurants that I frequented in graduate school, where the food was reasonable and delicious, the wine was served in thick glass tumblers and aesthetics were argued at each table.

The room is noisy with conversation, and there’s a steady stream of foot traffic as people constantly get up and go to the refrigerated counter case to choose which four salads they’d like on their antipasto plates.

It takes me three visits to Zio before I understand that the anxiety of selecting just four from a dozen salads is unnecessary: Absolutely every salad I try is distinctive and delicious--one might as well choose on aesthetic principles alone and devise a well-balanced plate of color.

The garlic beets actually convert a lifelong beet-hater at our table. “So far, these are the first beets I’ve ever liked enough to swallow,” she said. We also like a bitter broccoli salad, and the bright-tasting canellini beans with tuna, and a dense, earth-colored caponata and . . . and . . . everything else in the case. You can’t go wrong with the antipasti.

During my first two visits, my friends and I do go wrong with a few items. The minestrone, for example, is an undistinguished, mushy, lukewarm vegetable soup without a bean to the bowl, and a chicken breast wrapped around eggplant and prosciutto is dry and dull.

One night, among four of us, I’m the only one delighted with my main course--black mussels on linguine--whereas the others are less enthusiastic over the vegetarian, cheeseless, notably bland “Genza” pizza, the somewhat oily “Pennuccia” sausage pizza and the aforementioned dull chicken.

To tell the truth, after two visits to Zio and Company, I’m not thrilled at the thought of returning. Except for the antipasti, the food doesn’t compel me and, thanks mostly to understaffing, the service, in the words of one companion, “is just not good.”

A third visit, however, is charmed, thanks to a stylish white-haired woman at the next table who coaches our ordering. “I can’t believe you don’t love the food!” she rhapsodized. “I always have the best meals here.” Under her tutelage, so do we.

We try the night’s lasagna, which is actually a marvelous assemblage of thick tubular ziti noodles, ricotta cheese and a fresh tomato sauce. If ever lasagna could be called light, this is it. My lemon roasted chicken and tossed green salad taste like one of the best home-cooked meals I’ve had in ages. We also love the all-white “Bianca” pizza.

The waiter, if he has time, will tell how Zio’s chocolate cake won a chocolate-lovers’ award. Indeed, I don’t think I’ve ever tasted such condensed chocolate flavor as I found in the cake’s icing. The cake itself is heavy, oily and moist.

In the middle of my third meal at Zio’s, I suddenly know I’ll be back. Not only that, I’ll tell other people to go to Zio’s and to keep going until they get the hang of the place, until the art doesn’t discomfit them and the bare-bones service doesn’t annoy them, until they find those items on the menu that they’ll love to eat--I’m utterly confident that they’re there.

Zio and Company, 5242 Van Nuys Blvd., Sherman Oaks, (818) 784-8051. Open Tuesday 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., Wednesday through Saturday 11 a.m. to 9:30 p.m., Sunday 5:30 to 9 p.m. Beer and wine. MasterCard and Visa accepted. Recommended dishes: Mista della casa--choice of four antipasti ($7.50); Lasagna ($8); Linguine with black mussels ($8); Domingo calzone with pesto, chicken, mozzarella, ricotta and herbs ($8.50); Bianca pizza ($8.75); Lemon roasted chicken ($8.50).