Orso, So So : 20 reasons to love and hate L.A.’s newest celebrity hangout

Orso, 8706 W. Third Street, Los Angeles. (213) 274-7144. Open for lunch and dinner daily. Full bar. Valet parking. MasterCard and Visa accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $45-$75.

Ten reasons to go to Orso:

1--Because the menu is one of the most appealing in town.

2--Because the kitchen is imaginative enough to change that menu every day.

3--To see how Joe Allen, a beer and sawdust sort of place, has been transformed into a cool Italian trattoria with an open kitchen and the prettiest plates you’ve ever seen.

4--Because it is the only upscale restaurant in Los Angeles gutsy enough to serve lamb’s head, complete with the eyes.

5--Because Orso has become a remarkably low - key celebrity spot where you really do feel that everybody is treated equally.

6--For the wonderful bread, which is served for free.

7--Because this is one of the few restaurants in Los Angeles that routinely offers cheese as part of the menu (Gorgonzola, mascarpone, Parmesan, goat cheese)-- and doesn’t ask you to part with a fortune for it.

8--Because the patio--walled-in so you can’t see the traffic--is one of the few nice places to eat outdoors in this part of town.

9--For the side orders of vegetables--roasted potatoes with garlic, sauteed spinach, broccoli with olive oil and lemon.

10--For the truly delightful blood orange ice.

Ten reasons not to go to Orso:

1--Because the food on the menu all sounds better than it tastes.

2--Because the quality of the food varies enormously, and the changing menu makes it impossible to find a dish that you like and order it every time you come.

3--Because the mismatched chairs in this trendy trattoria are incredibly uncomfortable.

4--Because if you are an adventurous eater, you will be tempted to order the lamb’s head. And because if you do, you’ll be sorry.

5--Because the service here, while snappy and efficient, is so low-key that you have the feeling that the management hasn’t even noticed that the celebrities are present. And if they don’t notice the rich and famous, how do you expect them to notice you?

6--Because the inexplicably popular pizza bread costs $5.50 a basket and tastes like matzos topped with burnt garlic.

7--Because while the prices do not seem out of line, by the time you’ve spent $8 for an appetizer, $18 for an entree, had a few vegetables and a little cheese, the bill in this casual little restaurant is anything but casual.

8--Because the valet parking, in the lot next to the restaurant, is so tight that you wonder if you’re going to get in--or out--alive.

9--Because those side orders of vegetables are tiny--and cost $4.

10--Because the blood orange ice is the only wonderful dessert on the menu.

When all is said and done, this is the real question about Orso: With all the wonderful trattorias in Los Angeles, why choose this one?

You might choose it for the way that it looks and feels: it has the simplicity of a true Italian trattoria. And sitting outside on a warm evening, surrounded by beautiful people in casual clothes all talking with great animation, you can easily imagine yourself right into any cosmopolitan capital of the world.

The menu fuels this fantasy. It is a wonderfully appealing piece of paper, with a sense of adventure missing in most other restaurants. While you might not want to go quite as far as the lamb’s head (my main objection was not the eye, which was looking at the plate and not at me, but the fact that it offered very little to eat), most of the unusual dishes are not outrageous. On any given evening, you are likely to find stewed tripe as an appetizer (wonderful), or smoked eel served with white beans and roast shallots (delicious). Pasta dishes might include something simple such as fusilli with roast tomato and olives--and something more complicated such as black taglierini topped with grilled squid, slices of fennel, tomato, garlic and olive oil (a good idea and a pretty presentation, but I would have liked a bit more squid).

It’s nice that nobody has warned the kitchen that we don’t like innards, and that the entrees are likely to include sweetbreads sauteed with prosciutto and Madeira. Most nights there is pan fried calf’s liver with onions. And the appetizers--dishes like grilled spinach and sausage polenta with fontina, warm artichoke salads with prosciutto, mozzarella and black olives or a salad of dandelion greens, endive, tomato and shavings of Parmesan cheese--are not exactly your ordinary offerings.

But for all the appeal of the menu, many dishes simply don’t work. The pizzas I’ve tasted have all been disappointingly lackluster. The classic pizza Margherita tasted like melted cheese and tomato sauce on crackers. Appetizers generally sound better on paper than they taste in the mouth. The ingredients in that warm artichoke salad turned out not to have a lot to say to each other. The polenta was just a tired fried square of stuff. A tuna and octopus salad with capers, red onion and tomato contained delightfully tender octopus--and terribly tough tuna.

Pastas have been hit or miss. Taglietelle with grilled vegetables was pure delight, but ravioli stuffed with ricotta and chard were mushy, and an inept sauce of tomatoes and black olives didn’t help.

And for every entree I have loved--a wonderful plate of bronzino served on a bed of wilted lettuce, radicchio and watercress, for instance--there has been one that I didn’t--very ordinary lamb chops.

Still, I know I’ll be back. For while this trattoria lacks the warmth of Locanda Veneta, the reliable hipness of Angeli or the elegant pizazz of Pazzia, it has an appeal all its own. You may not be interested in knowing that Joe Allen (who still owns the restaurant) has so successfully remodeled his place. Watching Terri Garr eat a plate of pasta at the next table may not be your sort of thrill. And you may never want to see a lamb’s head sitting on your plate. But once you get done playing 20 questions, one main fact remains: There is a lovely new patio in town where you can count on getting a fine salad, a plate of pasta, a piece of cheese and a cool tart orange ice that leaves a very good taste in your mouth.

Recommended dishes: arugula, endive and tomato salad with Parmesan, $7; taglietelle with grilled vegetables, $12; veal scaloppine, $18; bronzino on wilted greens, $18; roasted potatoes with garlic, $4; cheese, $3.50; blood orange ice, $4.