RESTAURANT REVIEW : Market City: Third Time’s the Charm?

The Market City Caffe is going big time. The first of these popular, mid-priced Italian restaurants opened in Old Pasadena back when there were hardly any other such kitchens in town. With the smart good looks of a spiffy Italian grocery store, hot bread sticks, an infinite antipasto bar and candies served with after-dinner coffee, the first Market City appealed to Pasadena’s mass-market tastes long before a California Pizza Kitchen ever appeared.

The next Market City, in Burbank, again broke ground as one of the first upscale franchises there. The third, just opened at the Beverly Center, now pits the Market City concept against some of its major competition: a California Pizza Kitchen a few doors down, a Gaucho Grill next door, a Daily Grill across the street.

This new Market City occupies a handsome space with wheat-colored walls and exposed beams, lots of brick, a de rigueur open kitchen. The architecture has a kind of wide-open downtown feel I usually associate with Manhattan. Large, comfortable booths overlook the Center’s cavernous, busy parking garage. Opera and classic Italian songs swell at a non-intrusive volume. Here, two mothers relax after shopping while their toddlers teethe on soft bread sticks. Dates, young and old, slip in for a meal before the movies. Tattooed hipsters pool their cash for pizza or a bowl of thick pasta e fagioli.

I was relieved to find that problems I’ve consistently encountered at the Pasadena branch--lackadaisical service, indifferent management, inconsistent food--were not so in evidence at this new location. The service in particular is far more adept and gracious here.

The antipasto bar has an intimidating selection of dishes: Highlights include a cannellini bean and corn salad, a cannellini bean and tuna salad, sauteed spinach, black mussels. Roasted garlic cloves, however, bite back--they’re raw--and grilled eggplant is tough as leather. Still, the vegetarians in my company found ample sustenance in this lavish spread. And the antipasto bar may be a better bet than ordering individual appetizers and salads. The grilled smoked mozzarella appetizer is ill-conceived, the cheese sliced too thin to impart its sensuous, smoky softness.

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On the menu, the Market City Salad is said to contain “mescaline” lettuce--one of the more delightful misprints we’ve seen. Too bad then to find over-dressed mesclun and greens cluttered with vegetables, tomatoes and little balls of mozzarella. The Mediterranean salad, with feta, onion, cucumbers, etc., is also too overloaded and heavily dressed. Only the calamari salad transcends its embellishments--refreshing, lemony, the squid cold and firm, it is delicious.

A spinach pizza, with fresh, sweet ricotta and pine nuts is just fine. A Napoletana pizza, which I normally think of as a simple anchovy pizza, is here a sausage and hot pepper affair. The problem with the pizza--and the focaccia, and the bread sticks--is that the dough is heavy, oily and, generally, undercooked. The pale wedges of focaccia served with the entrees couldn’t be less inspiring.

Pastas, too, need work. Linguine with clams brims with a pungent broth, the clams are rubbery and strong-tasting and there’s far too much garlic and wine. The standard tomato sauce here is peculiarly sweet. Throwing a pinch of sugar into the pot may be done in many Italian households to counter the tomato’s acidity, but it also tends to flatten the flavor. The sausage lasagna, spaghetti with meatballs, even a baked sea bass special, all suffer from this sweet sauce.

Grilled meats are the most successful items we try. Half a chicken comes moist, flecked with herbs, crisp from the grill, with a lively salad of torn bread and arugula and spears of roasted potatoes. Lamb chops are also juicy and have a great, smoky, lightly charred flavor. Sicilian-style meatballs would be delicious too, it they weren’t raw inside (and didn’t come with the aforementioned sauce).

Despite flaws, this addition to the Beverly Center is more urbane than the California Pizza Kitchen and offers more vegetarian options than the Gaucho Grill. One wonders how the soon-to-open fourth Caffe will fit in its new home--in Las Vegas.

* Market City Caffe, 121 N. La Cienega Blvd., Los Angeles, (310) 358-9662. Open 7 days for lunch and dinner. Full bar. Visa, MasterCard and American Express accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $25-$62.