RESTAURANT REVIEW : Tuttopasta Feeds Downtown With the Future’s Fast Food

This would seem a bad time to open a business on Hill Street. Metro Rail has it all torn up, and even if people happen to hear about you, just to reach your door they have to run a narrow gantlet of panhandlers between the cyclone fencing and the walls. And yet Tuttopasta is packed with diners at lunch, to say nothing of the people waiting in a row of chairs for their takeout orders.

Well, Tuttopasta is Silvio’s latest restaurant, Silvio being Silvio DeMori, who has run some of the hottest Italian restaurants on the Westside. And it’s a fine work Silvio is doing here, providing interesting, inexpensive food with a subdued health-food sensibility, right in the middle of gastronomically deprived downtown. He delivers in the area for free; he faxes menus; the orders pour in. The man is doing well by doing good.

So far, this might only be a story of interest to people who find themselves downtown during the day, because Tuttopasta doesn’t open for dinner. However, Silvio refers to pasta as the fast food of the future, and just this week he opened another Tuttopasta, open only for dinner, at Pasta Maria in Brentwood. It, however, has a completely different menu.

Downtown you find a rather utilitarian place with some restful posters on the walls. Though it looks a little like a cafeteria, a waitress seats you and takes orders. Mostly, of course (though, despite the name Tuttopasta, not entirely), the menu lists pastas.

They’re solidly done. The penne all’ arrabbiata are just what penne all’ arrabbiata should be, a big plate of tubular pasta with a meaty and garlicky tomato sauce, a little peppery and flavored with about half a dozen strong calamata olives. The angel hair all’ ortolana is excellent comfort food, with its mild tomato sauce and some zucchini and carrot slices. Farfalle con broccoli is covered with melted cheese and richer, incidentally, than the somewhat perfunctory fettuccine alfredo, which picks up some odd flavor from the spinach that’s been added to it.

There are a couple of simple fish and chicken dishes, such as paillard (grilled flattened chicken breast served with fried potatoes), and some sandwiches made with thick wedges of fresh pizza bread. The burger is one of the few items on this menu containing much actual red meat. Not that Tuttopasta is totally against meat--the BLT is notably generous with the bacon--but there is a vegetarian sandwich of mozzarella, tomatoes and basil.

Things tend to come with a lettuce-less salad of zucchini, crookneck squash, carrot and cucumber slivers, with which you have your choice of a bland mustard dressing or a vinaigrette loaded with basil. At the end of the meal, although there are supposedly pastries on occasion, the only desserts I’ve found available were vanilla ice cream and a swashbuckling tiramisu made with sour cream and sprinkled with bitter chocolate.

Tuttopasta is also open for breakfast, serving the usual breakfast items plus some pasta dishes and a few others, such as chicken paillard with two eggs over easy and fried potatoes. It’s OK, but if you see a Tuttopasta near you someday, it will be because of the lunches.

Tuttopasta, 417 S. Hill St., Los Angeles, (213) 621-2625. Open for breakfast and lunch Monday through Friday. No alcoholic beverages. Street parking. No credit cards. Lunch for two, food only, $15-$30.