A Lesson in Speed Eating

“Oh, I’ve got to see your new car!” a woman squeals as her precision-coiffed blond friend walks into Ago on Melrose Avenue. Leaving the maitre d’ in the lurch, both of them rush back outside to coo over a gleaming Bentley the valet is about to park--right up front with the others. On any given night, the new Italian restaurant from Toscana chef Agostino Sciandri brings players from the film, music and television worlds out in force. But then, when actor Robert DeNiro, directors Tony and Ridley Scott and the Miramax team of Bob and Harvey Weinstein are investors, the buzz is built in.

Named after its grizzled Tuscan-born chef, Ago (pronounced AH-go) is a handsome, airy space with a high slanted roof, sleek track lighting and exposed ceiling ducts. Glass, stone and steel are played against the warmth of terra-cotta floors, plaster walls and a copper-clad wood-burning oven. Ruched sheer curtains screen the restaurant from the street. It’s a sophisticated cross between sleek urban restaurants in Italy and California’s relaxed open kitchens.

Some tables are better than others, however. If you get seated next to the bar, flanked by bejeweled matrons and leather-jacketed would-be actors and their dressed-to-kill dates, you’re in Siberia. What you want is a table on the raised area overlooking the kitchen and the rest of the room. VIP tables are at the very back, in the corner.

By the time the first reservation walks in the door, all stations are on red alert. Two or more managers pace the room impatiently. Line cooks stand at the ready. So does the wait staff, large enough for two or three restaurants. Before you can unfold your napkin, a white-jacketed server proffers bottles of water--flat or bubbly? The tall water glasses are topped off diligently. If you’re not careful, you could end up with three bottles of water on your bill.

Menus are presented and specials elaborated on as steaming plates of risotto and pasta sail by. Sciandri, who introduced L.A. restaurant-goers to their first taste of authentic Tuscan cuisine when he cooked at Il Giardino in the ‘80s, has created food for Ago that’s one step up from Toscana’s. This time, instead of focusing exclusively on Tuscany, he’s included touches of Liguria (seafood, pesto and grilled fish) and Emilia-Romagna (pasta and hearty meat dishes).

Ago’s oven bakes the plain flat bread drizzled with a little green-gold olive oil that’s brought to each table at the beginning of the meal. And it’s used for Sciandri’s signature version of bistecca alla fiorentina, a 20-ounce T-bone that’s finished on a little iron grill, where the less-than-flavorful Angus beef acquires a delicious char and the aroma of wood smoke. It’s a good trick, making the T-bone one of the best things to order here.

Another is zuppa di farro, which is everything this rustic soup of plump brown beans and spelt, a nutty grain, should be. Simply swirl in some olive oil and freshly ground pepper. Making something so plain so good is the genius of Tuscan cuisine. I also like the gutsy grilled polenta with salt cod in caper-studded tomato sauce. But starters are mostly downhill from there. The seafood antipasto is a tired mix of clams, mussels, shrimp, squid and bay scallops seasoned with lemon, olive oil and parsley. Except for the baby artichoke salad with walnuts, salads are rather ordinary.

Gnocchetti, chewy plugs of potato and flour, are drowned in your choice of tomato, meat or pesto sauce, and pasta dishes are altogether uninteresting. Spaghetti allo scoglio tossed with seafood is the best of the lot--that is, when it isn’t coated with too much tomato sauce. Spaghetti alla bottarga is oily and salty, marred by low-grade bottarga, the salted pressed roe of tuna or mullet.

The bistecca is so good that you’d think anything cooked in the wood-burning oven would be equally successful. Think again. The rosy lamb chops are quite tasty, but that magical oven can’t improve the rubbery pork chops cloaked in a thick, dark gravy.

Order specials with caution; they’re often the most expensive items here and overpriced for what you get. When a bresaola appetizer is proposed one evening, I jump. But instead of thin, supple slices of air-dried beef, these are thick as chipboard and $15 to boot! Langoustines, five of them grilled with heads on, are excellent, and my Dover sole, a small fish grilled whole and deftly fileted by the waiter, is wonderfully delicate in flavor; but when I find out later they both cost $30, I have second thoughts. The Italian version of schnitzel, cotoletta alla Milanese, a breaded bone-in veal chop pounded to the size of a plate, is so laden with grease that it’s hard to eat with relish.

The kitchen doesn’t put much effort into the contorni, or side dishes. Almost every plate gets the same hanks of spinach, those golden roasted rosemary potatoes (which are irresistible when they haven’t been hanging around the kitchen too long) or the juicy cannellini beans that Tuscans love.

The pace of a meal at Ago can feel relentless. On a night when the food has been coming out fast and furious, we complain. Our waiter explains that he’s required to fire the dishes that way. “Take your time!” he says soothingly. “You’d like to relax and finish the wine? I’ll bring you a selection of desserts in a little while.” Five minutes later, he’s back with a messy platter of sweets--and the bill. Which prompts my guests to announce that they’ll never be back. We’ve spent more than $70 a person and feel as if we’ve received the bum’s rush rather than a gracious dining experience.

Ago’s wine list offers some top Italian wines, but few in the $20-to-$30 range. And, like Toscana’s, it doesn’t list vintages for white wines. Excuse me, but vintages do matter, especially when you’re considering bottles such as Mario Schiopetto’s Pinot Grigio ($54) or Angelo Gaja’s Chardonnay “Rossj Bass” ($65). In this age of computers, it’s not hard to keep an up-to-the-minute list. Ago just doesn’t bother.

Desserts will be of interest only to people with a serious sugar habit. You can have a boring tiramisu made with more cloying whipped cream than mascarpone, a commercial-tasting torta della nonna filled with sweet custard and pignoli or an open-face berry tart slathered in whipped cream.

With this namesake restaurant, Agostino Sci-andri has, unfortunately, decided to rest on his laurels. Why fool with a winning formula? he must be thinking. Why else would this competent chef and his staff sleepwalk through the menu instead of presenting L.A. with a restaurant that gives regional Italian cooking its due?

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AGO

CUISINE: Italian. AMBIENCE: Roomy and stylish trattoria with open kitchen and wood-burning oven, an army of waiters and rushed service. BEST DISHES:zuppa di farro, artichoke salad, baby rack of lamb, bistecca alla fiorentina, grilled Dover sole. WINE PICK: Lodovico Antinori Sauvignon Blanc, Tuscany. FACTS: 8478 Melrose Ave., West Hollywood; (213) 655-6333. Dinner nightly; lunch Monday through Friday. Antipasti and salads, $6 to $13.50; pasta and risotti, $9.25 to $12.50; main courses, $18 to $30. Corkage $10. Valet parking.