Restaurant Review : On Beverly Hills Shopping Expedition, Reprovisioning at Raffaele’s Is the Key to Survival

Good morning. Your assignment, should you choose to accept it, is to spend an exhausting hour or two shopping at Camp Beverly Hills. Then find a place to stoke up on Italian food.

You could walk next door to the Italian sandwich place, of course. But you could also walk in the other direction and find Raffaele Ristorante, a much more suitable place to examine the fast-lane survival gear that you’ve dropped a bundle on. It’s a restaurant of clean modern lines and quiet lighting, and paintings that seem at the same time dreamy and wise-cracking.

One gathers that the Raffaele after whom the restaurant is named is the chef, but the star is certainly the steel-gray-haired maitre d’. He makes possibly the most elaborate caffe alla diavolo in town, which starts with sugar being melted over a flame onto the lip of a wineglass and climaxes with burning Triple Sec being poured down a spiral of orange peel in a glowing blue cascade.

He’s also a particularly attentive maitre d’, but what we really need to know about is the food. You must have something to eat while you look over your new bush jacket and wonder whether the people in the wacky wall paintings would be caught dead in anything like it.

OK. There are rather good, deep-fried calamari , abundant and a little al dente with some fresh tomato sauce. A sort of polished-up version of eggplant Parmesan is called tortino di melanzane , with a lot of cheese and not so much tomato sauce as your usual Parmesan.

The fried mozzarella is a little salty, exhibiting an occasional vice of this kitchen, but nicely crisp. The mushrooms stuffed with crab exhibit a vice that this kitchen rarely indulges in, small portions, and it is also rather mildly flavored, like some of the entrees.

Among the pastas, the house specialty, as the menu points out, is agnolotti stuffed with spinach, and ricotta served simply in cream. It’s sweet and simple, but I far prefer the rugged penne alla contadina , where the pasta is mixed with eggplant, peppers, tomato, black olives and capers, a flavorful mishmash with a definite jolt of vinegar.

For a few days, there was a nice special of canneloni with a faintly spinach-scented veal filling topped with a little tomato sauce and surrounded by a cream-and-tomato sauce that was thickly granulated with grated Parmesan, also a little salty and roughly flavorful.

There are a number of grilled meats, such as the lombata , a big veal chop slightly charred on the outside, tender, sweet and light pink inside. The meats are generally garnished with carrots, peppers, mixed squashes and surprisingly al dente mushrooms. There are also some sautees, like perfectly cooked salmon with a very delicate, almost evanescent tarragon and onion sauce or chicken breasts in a mild mustard and lemon sauce.

Osso buco is as tender as can be in a rich tomato sauce with a hint of the garlic and lemon peel flavoring ordinarily added on top. Oddly, however, when I ordered it, there was none of the advertised saffron rice but some not-bad angel-hair pasta in tomato sauce instead.

The maitre d’ makes a couple of desserts at a little gas burner, where he whips up a zabaglione with egg-yolk foam that is actually less cloyingly sweet than usual. The other specialty dessert is the tirami su , a rather mannered version of this simple dessert of ladyfingers mixed with espresso and mascarpone cheese, served in a dark chocolate cup.

With this, you’re fortified. You’re ready for anything. You can go forth and spend for hours to come.

Suggested dishes: fritto di calamari, $5.50; lombata, $17.95; penne alla contadina, $9.50; tirami su, $4.50.

Raffaele Ristorante, 9634 Santa Monica Blvd., Beverly Hills. (213) 276- 4466. Open for lunch Monday through Friday, 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m.; for dinner Monday through Saturday, 5:30 to 11 p.m. Wine and beer. Valet parking. American Express, MasterCard and Visa accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $35 to $60.