A Grotto With Gusto

“Heart of Screenland� read the tree planters along Culver City’s Main Street. You certainly know it’s an industry town at lunchtime, when people pouring out from sound stages at nearby Sony Pictures and the Skye Partners crowd Novecento Pasta and Grill.

The tiny place is often less crowded at dinner. And fortunately, even when sidewalk seating is all that’s available, this is one of the few places in the Southland where sidewalk dining is not a hell of traffic noise and exhaust fumes. Culver City has a pretty quiet Main Street, in part because it might be the only Main Street in the world that’s only a block and a half long.

With its walls rusticated with fake brick and stone to suggest a 600-year-old grotto, Novecento looks like a certain kind of corny Italian restaurant from the early ‘60s. But here’s why people come: obliging waiters, skilled Italian cooking (the cook once worked at Chianti Cucina) and generous portions. Some of the antipasti could easily serve as entrees.

I’m thinking particularly of the bruschetta de funghi al Barolo, six slices of toasted Italian bread topped with mushrooms stewed in veal sauce and a bit of red wine, plus a substantial salad. It’s delicious, it’s only $5, and by this point you’ve already had a complimentary toast covered with olive puree and a plate of slightly sweet low-rise Italian bread with a cruet of a chimichurri-like vinaigrette dosed with basil and red pepper. To make a long story short: If you have appetizers and pasta, don’t order a meat course as well, or you’ll be carrying about half your dinner home in foam cartons.

Other appetizers include the familiar goat cheese bruschetta and the much less familiar polenta novarese--fried polenta mixed with mushrooms, hot sausage and tomato sauce. You can get a fairly classical Caesar salad (romaine, crunchy little croutons, no anchovies) or the huge insalata Novecento full of grilled vegetables and garnished with mozzarella and toast spread with liver pate. There’s also the option of minestrone or the soup of the day.

Now it’s time for the primi course, and it’s a tough call. You could get ravioli della nonna, a big plate of square ravs filled with spinach and ricotta in a mild marinara enriched with a little cream. There are a couple of whole spinach leaves in the sauce.

But then there are the gnocchi di patate, which are smooth and al dente, like all the pastas. They come in either pesto or a bolognese sauce rich with ground beef. Cavatappi Novecento is a big pile of corkscrew pasta mixed with broccoli, plenty of sausage and fresh and sun-dried tomatoes.

Even the familiar penne puttanesca is not to be disdained. The sauce is livelier than at many of our Italian restaurants, tasting of fresh tomatoes rather than industrial-strength tomato sauce and emphatically punctuated with capers and red pepper.

Mushrooms are all over this menu. Fettuccine alla boscaiola comes in a meaty ragu enriched with mushrooms. The most impressive pasta of all is rigatoni Maddalena, in a rich, ivory-colored Alfredo sauce heartbreakingly scented with mushrooms and Italian bacon.

The mushroom extreme is risotto ossolana, made with Arborio rice, porcini mushrooms and a little red wine. It’s a nice risotto, tender but not soupy, and it’s full of mushroom flavor, all right. Unfortunately, every mouthful tastes the same, and unless you’re really in the mood for mushrooms, this one will get boring.

The secondi list is short and mostly familiar: chicken breast with mushrooms and Marsala, for instance, and grilled chicken with garlic and rosemary. Costata alla pizzaiola is a steak intriguingly dressed with a few olives and capers and just a suggestion of tomato sauce. Most steak lovers like their meat a little more tender than this, but I went for it because of that elegant sauce.

How I ever considered ordering dessert after this sort of meal I can’t quite recall. The desserts were nonclassical--a tiramisu without coffee or liquor, a panna cotta more like a caramel custard with the flavor of a toasted marshmallow--and very, very rich. Maybe I needed a little quick energy to help me carry home all those foam cartons.

BE THERE

Novecento Pasta and Grill, 3837 Main St., Culver City; (310) 842-3838. Lunch, 11:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m. Monday-Friday; dinner, 5-9 p.m. Monday-Saturday. Beer and wine. Street parking. Visa and MasterCard. Dinner for two, $35-$59.

What to Get: bruschetta de funghi al Barolo, polenta alla novarese, ravioli, fettuccine alla boscaiola, cavatappi Novecento, rigatoni Maddalena, tiramisu.