Drago Ristorante

Inside a front window of Il Pastaio, the one that appears to be sashed with rows of colored dried pasta, Lillian Nula works the fresh pasta doughs that, fed into the machine, will emerge as ribbons of trenette and tagliolini, or hand-shaped will assume the traditional forms of tortelloni and agnolotti. She is a warm, motherly woman with curly black hair and a smile that could melt the coldest heart, and because she handles pasta expertly an observer can be forgiven for thinking that she must have absorbed the skill at her Italian mother's knee. But Senora Nula was born in El Salvador, not in Italy, and she learned from one of Los Angeles's past masters of pasta, Celestino Drago, a chef with whom she has worked for many years. At Il Pastaio, Drago's latest eating place, the sweet senora is almost as big a draw as the superlative pastas.

Only a chef as respected as Drago could get away with opening a small, crowded pasta place in Beverly Hills, where the rich and famous, who are not used to waiting for anything, wait along with everyone else for a table to turn over. That is the way it is at Il Pastaio, which takse no reservations and where people stand shifting from foot to foot and smiling through gritted teeth because they know the pastas are worth it. Renowened for his ristorante Drago in Santa Monica, the Sicilian chef has put his youngest brother, twenty-two-year-old Giacomino , in charge of the kitchen. Like Celestino, Giacomino is a charmer, sometimes circulating through the room to greet the regulars or to send a complimentary glass of vin santo to a new face. "I say to the customers, Il Pastaio is your restaurant. We want you to feel at home," Giacomino explains. And the customers take him at his word. Some prefer Il Pastaio to home and turn up to eat every day of the week.

Who wouldn't if they could? Il Pastaio was intended as a simple place, but it really isn't. The secondi, or entrees, may have been eliminated, but there is such an appealing selection of antipasti, salads, and soups that is possible to eat splendidly here without ever getting to a pasta. There are also about half a dozen risottos, among the best in the city. If i had to narrow my choice to one it would bet eh wild mushroom risotto with mascarpone cheese, a taste of heaven on earth.

Drago's Sicilian specialties intrigue me most. Fried aracine, formed into golden rice cones instead of the typical orange-like balls, are miniature mMount Etnas that burst with beef ragout, peas, and provolone at the touch of a fork.

There are mysterious Arabian overtones to the wonderful caponata- a tart mixture of minched eggplant, golden raisins, olives, capers an pine nuts- and the taste is so seductive on its own that the little grilled shrimp around it are an unnecessary distraction. Another very old Arab-Sicilian idea, a sauce of garlic, basil, and tomatoes thickened with ground almonds, is the pesto trapanese (from the seacoast town of Trapani, which faces North Africa), paired at Il Pastaio with green and white tagliolini. Last summer brought a beautiful zucchini and ricotta timballo, as ethereal as a souffle, in a sweetly intense tomato sauce.

Once in a while the chefs do the Sicilian classic called pasta 'ncasciata, a sumptuous ceremonial dish popular at baptism and weddingbreakfasta and made in large casseroles. here it arrives as an individual eggplant-wrapped timballo enclosing macaroni, meat ragout, peas, Pecorino cheese, and hard-cooked egg in a pool of tomato sauce. I am afraid the description makes it sound ponderous (which it was the one time I had it in a resturant in Sicily), but the cooks in Il Pastaio's kitchen have angel's hands.

The Carpaccio so popular at Drag has made its way here, to the relief of everyone who can't imagine a meal without it. Those who shy away from eating the original raw beef or marinated raw venison versions (both first-rate) find themselves irresistibly drawn to the ones of swofdfish and 'ahi, swofrdfish in translucent slices served with blood orange segments and wisps of raw fennel is so delicate one would hardly know it was fish. The 'ahi, showered with shavings of bottarga (dried tuna roe) like salt spray, truly tastes of the sea and is delicious.

Il Pastaio is where I'd like to take American chefs who play with pasta but don't know the first thing about it. "Look at the firm but supple texture," I'd say. "Note that the pasta does not drown in the sauce. See how sparing the kitchen is with ingredients." Then I'd order the exquisitely tender pumpkin-stuffed spinach tortelloni sauced with only butter and fresh sage, a Lombardian pasta preparation that needs no other embellishments and that, in fact, would be ruined by any other. Almost all the restaurant's pastas are object lessons in how pasta should be done - the broad ribbons of papprdelle in a rich and musky sauce of phesant; the garganelli all' amatriciana, quills of pasta nestled in a deep and earthy tomato sauce studded with pancetta; black and white trenette with little Manila clams and the surprise of shredded arugula in a light, briny white-wine broth; and the ravishing ravioli half-moons stuffed with lobster and zucchini. The only pasta I didn't care for, one in a contemporary Italian vein, married orecchie d'asino (donkey's ears) with a creamy smoked salmon sauce too strong to my taste.

Dining Guide '95

August, 1995