Garlic's In The Air At The Pasta Bella

Jul 24, 1992

John Hinterberger

XX Pasta Bella, 5909 15th Ave. N.W. Dinner ($8 to $14) 4:30 to 10 p.m. Monday through Saturday; until 9 p.m. Sunday. No lunch. Beer, wine. Major credit cards. Nonsmoking area. Reservations: 789-4933. --------------------------------------------------------------- Hot summer night, dinner in the city. . . Well, not quite the city. Ballard.

Fifty feet from the front door of Pasta Bella, which is north of downtown Ballard on 15th Avenue .Northwest, you could smell the garlic, floating on a transient but welcome breeze. I have always maintained that simply as a matter of promotion, any restaurant that wanted to cheaply advertise its existence needed only to fry onions or roast garlic nonstop and open its windows.

At the original Ballard Pasta Bella (there's a newer one atop Queen Anne Hill), they do roast garlic nonstop, but for reasons of utility, not promotion. Roasted bulbs of garlic (with the tops neatly sliced off) are served along with loaves of a rustic country bread from A la Francais.

It's an odd, funky little spot. Two side-by-side narrow dining rooms, with tables too small to really provide elbow room, are painted a dark, almost gloomy green. The place used to be a vintage clothing, informal foods, and coffee shop known as Rumblefish Espresso.

Mike Horri and David Rasti, both Iranians, took over the Ballard restaurant a few years ago (Rasti's Italian mother provided the recipes); they opened the Queen Anne site at 1530 Queen Anne Ave. N. (the former Apres Vous) last year. Lunch and dinner is served at the Queen Anne restaurant; dinners only at the Ballard one.

Servings are plentiful, and a good minestrone or large green salad is included with the dinners. So my first suggestion would be to skip the appetizers. But . . .

The antipasto plate ($5.95) is uncommonly good and easily provides a starter for four. The plate is centered with a bowl of an excellent caponata (vegetable relish), and rimmed by slices of a dry Genoa salami (cut a bit too thick), provolone cheese wedges, pickled mushrooms and eggplant cubes, Gorgonzola cheese, mildy hot pepperoncini with melted cheese and surprisingly tasty pickled red onion quarters.

Another appetizer, the Calamari Saute (also $5.95), is really more of a main course than a snack. I'd rather see it ladled over pasta than passed around with bread.

A final starter option is Garlic Cheese Bread ($3.75), which strikes me as redundant - since you get bread and you get roasted garlic along with the meals, anyway. And the melted cheeses on the appetizer, Monterey Jack and cheddar, aren't exactly regional Italian.

Salads are primarily hand-torn segments of Romaine lettuce covered with shredded carrots and Parmesan. For $1.50 extra you can substitute a Caesar salad, which comes with a section of lemon over all and a creamy dressing quite unCaesar-like. There was little evidence of either Worcestershire or anchovies.

The lettuce itself was a problem. The torn leaves had spent a while in the refrigerator before being assembled.

The rest of the menu is almost entirely pasta - or meats and poultry served over pasta. The pasta in all its forms was first-rate and appeared to be freshly made and cut; the successes of the various saucings varied.

There's a choice of 18 pasta dishes, some more bella than others. Prices range from $7.95 for a basic Fettucini Alfredo to $13 for Veal Piccata with Mushrooms and Capers served over linguini.

A benchmark plate in any pasta house has to be plain old Spaghetti and Meatballs ($8.75) - and these passed muster. The meatballs are substantial but not dense. The base meats are a mix of lean ground beef and Italian sausage. The tomato sauce is thick and dotted through with chunks of fresh tomato. A child's plate is offered at $4.50.

Gorgonzola Walnut Ravioli ($9.50) is the only stuffed pasta on the printed menu (nightly specials include others) and it is choice. The wrapper is a pale green spinach-roasted garlic pasta. It's filled with a lively combination of Gorgonzola and ricotta cheeses and minced walnuts. The pasta squares are then tossed with a garlic (yes, again) cream sauce and served over a pool of marinara. "A very successful mingling of flavors," murmured my companion.

My plate of Scallop Saute ($11.95) held a generous array of the namesake seafood (eight marshmallow-sized specimen nicely cooked) along with chopped black olives (domestic), capers, tomatoes and a scant amount of fresh basil. It was heaped over a good-size mound of angel-hair pasta, which could have been more thoroughly drained. Still, a tasty and filling creation.

The Seafood Fettuccine ($11.50), cubes of cod, scallops and tiny bay shrimp (canned, I thought, but maybe not) sauteed with mushrooms and herbs and finished with cream, was pleasant but bland.

Somewhat more aggressive was the Linguini Amatriciana ($8.50), with little squares of pancetta, peppers and fresh tomatoes in a wine sauce.