RESTAURANT REVIEW : Girasole: An Italian Homey Gem

Among other honors it may deserve, Girasole could take an award for being one of the tiniest restaurants around. It is, in fact, so small and self-sustaining, I hesitate to call attention to this flourishing neighborhood gem.

But there is a lesson in scale here: In a town with a major outbreak of Italian restaurants, some approaching the size of feed lots, this pretty little cucina Italiana occupies a slim half-a-storefront in Larchmont Village and manages to produce some of the most pleasant, modestly priced food around. Open six days a week for lunch and only three nights for dinner, Girasole is essentially a Mom-and-Pop establishment--only Mom and Pop are classy, adept Italian cooks.

The dining space is close-packed but relaxing and pretty. Classical music plays faintly. Walls painted the pale, rosy buff of Italian stone are adorned with haunting, slightly surreal images of deserted Italian piazzas and courtyards. Small halogen spotlights perch on wires overhead. And somebody, clearly, has a penchant for model ships.

Most customers appear to be regulars. After three visits, I begin to run into familiar faces: the older woman dining solo, tucking into her tiramisu with meditative bliss; a TV actor with his loud-laughing date, a minor movie star.

The menu is not significantly different from dozens of others: The familiar assortment of antipasti, paste, secondi is supplemented by an additional category, contorni, a selection of not very interesting side orders. Also, your wait person will recite a lengthy list of the daily specials. The restaurant serves no alcohol, so those who want wine with their meal must carry it in.

Bresaola, Italian air-dried beef softened in a simple lemony dressing, comes with peppery fresh arugula leaves. Marinated grilled vegetables have a good vinegary bite. The chef’s soup of the day, zucchini puree topped with triangles of bread, is a bit salty.

Spinach gnocchi is the first dish that makes me swoon. Unlike the usual soft, seductively gummy white pillows of boiled dough, these spinach types are plump, oblong dumplings of fluffy, finely chopped greens tossed in lightly browned butter, sage and Parmigiano. Each one has a miraculously thin pasta-like casing--the result, explains the waitress, of being rolled in flour before boiling.

The second knockout pasta is a tagliatelle with sauced sweet onions. That’s it: ribbony al dente noodle. Slippery pale onion cooked slowly in butter until softened and sweet. A scant spoonful of cheese. Few pastas are simpler--or better.

Not all the pastas are equally numinous. An otherwise lovely, simple penne with asparagus and cream comes out of the kitchen barely lukewarm. A puttanesca is made with an unusual--and, unfortunately, overcooked--ruffled tube pasta called creste di gallo, which means cockscombs.

Entrees also range from average to sublime. Swordfish with lemon and capers is dull. Marsala first seems to overpower veal scaloppine , but then the sweetness in the veal rises nicely to complement the sweetness in the wine.

Stuffed chicken breast, or involtini, presents a colorful cross-section of bright fresh green asparagus, red and yellow peppers--it’s good, but nowhere near as delicious as pounded, sauteed chicken paillards, which are tender as sole, tossed with naughtily bitter radicchio and slivers of smoky speck (a cured, smoked Italian-style ham).

Even if you don’t need to pay a visit to the washroom, you should, if only to get a good look at Girasole’s small, homey kitchen: The women and men bump elbows as they peer into boiling pasta pans, dish up slabs of thin, rich lasagna, tend deep vats of tomato sauce. There’s the feel of a large family all pitching in to prepare a feast. Dishes are given the kind of personal attention that would most likely be lost in any major expansion.

For dessert, the unsweetened, moist apple cake has an elusive perfumed quality. Dense, coarse-crumbed orange cake made with marmalade grows on us, each bite better than the one before. But the crowning to any meal here is panna cotta, the smooth, cold, snowy-white cream custard with raspberry sauce and fresh berries.

* Girasole Cucina Italiana, 225 1/2 N. Larchmont Blvd., Los Angeles, (213) 464-6978. Open for lunch Monday through Saturday. Open for dinner Thursday through Saturday. No alcohol served. Visa and MasterCard accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $25 - $60 .