THE BEST OF RELATIONS : By the Sea in Santa Monica, Down-Home Italian Cooking That’s Quite a Family Affair

Early in the morning, if you happen to be driving down Santa Monica Canyon toward the sea, you might see Giorgio Baldi watering the plants in front of his modest Italian restaurant. Until two months ago, Giorgio was the name picked out in tiny lights above the door, but when Baldi and partner Bruno Vietina recently parted ways, the name was changed. The beachside trattoria is now officially called Il Ristorante di Giorgio Baldi, but regulars still refer to it by its simpler name. And why not? Baldi is still in the kitchen cooking up dishes from his hometown, Forte dei Marmi, on the coast of Tuscany. Daughter Elena welcomes guests at the door and son Edoardo waits tables.

Wedged between a swimsuit shop and an old bar in the shape of a boat, the crowded one-room restaurant is boisterous. Italian waiters rush from the open kitchen bearing bowls of cacciucco , homey pasta dishes, plain grilled seafood. The basic printed menu is supplemented each night by a long list of specials, recited in a breathless rush. “He’s prepared to make all that?” I wonder. “I haven’t finished,” the young waiter tells me, before plunging on--smoked swordfish carpaccio, grilled langoustines, bistecca fiorentina. How does he remember it all? “I grew up with it. Giorgio is my father and I moved here when I was 10 from Tuscany when my father came to cook at Il Giardino.” When I come back six months later, he reels off a nearly identical litany of dishes.

I love sitting outside on the little terrace, covered with a green-and-white striped awning. But the real appeal is the cooking, which truly tastes like Italy. The food here has a kind of innocence, closer in spirit and taste to home cooking than to restaurant fare. Baldi has the good sense to let traditional dishes alone, resisting the temptation to make them more elaborate or to throw in a few more ingredients just so they’ll sound more appealing. It’s a wise choice. These dishes don’t need fixing.

Nor is the cooking formulaic. He adds a handful of mache to the tonno e fagioli , the classic--and perfectly delicious--Tuscan dish of canned tuna with fat white beans dressed with olive oil and lemon. A lovely, warm seafood salad of tender squid, tiny clams in the shell, mussels and shrimp is garnished with marinated roasted peppers and the same earthy beans. And a stack of piping hot deep-fried shiitake mushroom slices comes with a slice of fresh pecorino cheese, a marvelous pairing and my favorite antipasto.

Cacciucco tastes authentically Mediterranean, a ruddy fish soup with great depth of flavor and loads of seafood. Sometimes there’s a fabulous fresh clam soup. Pasta e fagioli is plain as can be, an opaque brown puree laced with whole beans and ribbons of fettucine. It needs only a thread of deep-green Tuscan olive oil to bring out its earthy flavor.

Baldi can be trusted with pasta, too. Something as basic as spaghetti semplice with tomato sauce and basil is just perfect. It’s the stuffed pasta, though, that brings me back. There’s ravioli filled with fluffy ricotta and napped in the same light, transparent tomato sauce with silky sliced porcini mushrooms. Or the combinazione fantasia , two kinds of pasta that were the same each time I visited: tender little half-moon lobster ravioli and elongated triangles cloaked in butter and asparagus.

It’s even harder to come by good gnocchi and risotto. Too often gnocchi are heavy, floury lumps; here they’re heavenly little puffs in a subtle Gorgonzola sauce. Baldi never forgets that the point of risotto is the rice. Some chefs stir in so many ingredients it’s impossible to taste the rice. His graceful risotto della nonna , made with a flavorful broth and a confetti of garden vegetables, is just what risotto should be.

And when he gets a wonderful piece of fish he knows enough to simply grill it and serve it plain with a wedge of lemon. He shows similar restraint with his meat dishes. There’s a lovely breaded veal cutlet in tomato sauce studded with olives, and a very good version of cotoletta alla Milanese , veal pounded thin, breaded and browned. But the little lamb chops, while decent, are often overcooked, and the bistecca fiorentina bears little resemblance to the real thing.

The mostly Italian wine list could be better, and better priced. And I wish there was a more interesting selection of Tuscan wines.

Desserts are as basic as the rest of the menu--an austere ricotta cheesecake, a decent tiramisu, and the pudding-like torta della nonna (grandmother’s cake).

What will happen, I wonder, when the Baldi family opens Giorgio Malibu this month? Giorgio plans to stay on at the original locale. His wife, Roberta, will be running the new place. And she, Edoardo claims, is the great cook in the family.

* Ristorante di Giorgio Baldi, 114 W. Channel Road, Santa Monica; (310) 573-1660. Closed Mondays. Dinner for two, food only, $45 to $85. Corkage, $10 .