RESTAURANTS : IL NUOVO MADHOUSE : Los Angeles’ Favorite Westside Italian Restaurateur Goes Over the Hill

This is not a good time to be a restaurateur. Restaurants are filled on the weekends, but during the week, the best of them sit empty. “We have a big rush at 7:30,” says the manager of one high-profile place, “and in better times we’d try to spread the people out, asking them to come in earlier or later. But the way things are now, we can’t afford to turn down any business. It’s real hard on the kitchen. By 10, we’re empty.”

But there’s one kind of L.A. restaurant that is not empty at 10 p.m., even on weeknights: new restaurants. From the moment they open, they are invariably packed with people anxious to say that they were there first.

Consider the case of Posto. Although restaurateur Piero Selvaggio has two perfectly wonderful older Westside restaurants with lots of empty seats (Valentino and Primi), his new Posto in Sherman Oaks is an aggravating madhouse. Every time I’ve been, a mass of humanity has stood at the door, jockeying for position. One evening, while the hostess was off on a tour of the dining room and I was standing at the head of the line, a man poked his finger into my chest and put his face very close to mine. “I’ve been waiting 20 minutes!” he said. “How much longer do you expect me to put up with this?”

“As far as I’m concerned,” I replied, “you can leave any time.” His face started to turn purple, so I added, “then I can have your table.” His face faded to red. “I just hate waiting,” he apologized, “and it’s so crowded here.”

It wasn’t much less crowded in the dining room, which had been filled with as many seats as could possibly be squeezed into the space. The din, despite soft seats and carpeting, was horrendous. Shouting across the table, we decided on a wine and immediately ordered a plate of frico. Five minutes later, the world seemed better.

The wine list is so wonderful it would be hard to make a mistake, and frico are one of the world’s most enticing foods. They look like lacy potato chips and taste like the crunchy top of onion soup gratinee-- the part that there’s never enough of. What they are, simply, are cooked curls of Parmesan cheese, perfect to nibble while you read the menu.

This interesting document manages to waltz its way through a number of cultures. By inclination Italian, it has a meat-and-potatoes bias and gives more than a nod to the neighborhood deli. An adventurous eater could start with skewers of snails and go on to duck lasagna or saddle of rabbit while his timid companions played it safe with steak and Caesar salad. On the one hand, there’s penne with sun-dried tomatoes and peperoncini; “very hot” warns the menu, with two exclamation points for emphasis. On the other, there’s comforting mushroom-barley soup and bland, steamed whitefish. In short, the menu tries to be all things to all people.

It’s most comfortable when it sticks to Italy, as in the very satisfying antipasto plate of prosciutto, roast peppers and tiny balls of mozzarella. At this time of year, there’s not a more luxurious dish in town than the rich, buttery risotto generously topped with shavings of white truffle.

The pasta dishes are excellent and out of the ordinary. Duck-and-porcini lasagna is nothing like the clunky thing that usually passes for lasagna in America. This one comes sizzling to the table in an individual casserole, delicate sheets of pasta layered with white sauce, laced with duck and mushrooms and topped with a sprinkling of cheese.

That hot penne is notable for the clarity of its flavors--the stubby tubes of pasta mingle with the sweet, mellow flavor of sun-dried tomatoes and the sharp heat of little peppers. You find the same straightforward quality in the orecchiette-- little ears of pasta--simply tossed with bits of broccoli and dried ricotta cheese.

Other dishes that have the same confident strength are the brasato of beef--hearty chunks of meat stewed in barolo and served with huge, fluffy “croutons” of polenta--and the steak tagliata , simple slices of good grilled beef served over an arugula salad.

While the menu is less comfortable when it strays into the blandness of deli-land, there are a few hits there, too. I thought the mushroom-barley soup--the mushrooms are actually porcini--was a brilliant take on a soup you’d find in any Jewish deli. This one was thinner in texture, thicker in flavor, with a very appealing caramelized quality.

For me the most misguided dish on the menu is polpette-- a take on crab cakes done with shrimp and lobster and lots of herbs. The cakes are a little tough, a little salty--and taste more of fennel than of shellfish.

Selvaggio is justly proud of his homemade sausages, an assortment of which is grilled and served with a baked potato and garlic-laden vegetables. All of the grilled meats--lamb chops, veal, chicken and steak--are given the potato-and-vegetable treatment, and all are fine dishes--if perhaps not really what you want to eat in a restaurant capable of so much refinement. The only disaster on the grill list was the saddle of rabbit, which arrived in unappealingly dry little chunks.

The entrees are occasionally too timid for my taste. But the roasted tuna with sweet peppers and the world’s best capers can be wonderful if you demand that it not be overcooked. And the baby back ribs baked with potatoes and rosemary are like something you can imagine eating on a winter day in a farmhouse high in the hills of Italy.

Few Italian restaurants work wonders with desserts, and this one is no exception. The winner on the dessert list (other than some excellent gelati), is the rich and elegant panna cotta-- a sort of Italian custard--which comes surrounded by a halo of caramelized sugar and a sea of coffee creme anglaise.

Posto is a restaurant that’s bound to do well. It offers good value for the money (a careful couple could easily eat for $40), and it is clearly attempting to please its audience with a wide range of choices. But once the people angrily jostling one another at the door move on to the next new restaurant, will Posto mature into the great restaurant that the Valley is waiting for?

Posto, 14928 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks; (818) 784-4400. Open for lunch Monday through Friday ; nightly for dinner. Full bar. Valet parking. All major credit cards accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $36-$73.

Food stylist: Alice M. Hart / Food for Film