Thoughts Turning to Romance at Il Balcone

Salvatore Caredda and his partner, Paolo Equinozio, run their restaurant Il Balcone in Sherman Oaks on the strength of the notion that you don’t fool with a good thing.

To them, overhauling the menu means adding a new salad now and then, and occasionally a new pasta dish. It doesn’t mean tossing out the old in favor of the new, willy-nilly.

When Caredda and Equinozio want to experiment, they play with their daily specials--at the moment, a bow-tie pasta with fresh asparagus, a salad of broiled salmon over greens and dressed with mustard and vinegar, and a Sardinian shell pasta with broiled mild Italian sausage and a tomato sauce.

They also put on big do’s for such holidays as Valentine’s Day--on a Friday this year, so likely to generate business for restaurants everywhere.

For those who plan to schedule time to bill and coo, Caredda expects to concoct a variety of specials ranging from light pastas to such substantial dishes as veal scaloppine and a tenderloin of pork with shiitake mushrooms.

Caredda, who hails from the island of Sardinia, and Equinozio, who grew up outside Naples, moved Il Balcone to its present location nearly two years ago, having operated the original Il Balcone in Encino for 11 years.

Their restaurant, at 14633 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks, (818) 995-9380, is open for lunch weekdays, for dinner seven nights a week.

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Herb Newman, a 14-year veteran of the restaurant scene in the San Fernando Valley, has a new answer for people who come into his Studio City seafood restaurant, the Oyster House, wanting a steak.

“They come in and ask, ‘Where’s the beef?’ I answer: ‘Just two miles down the road at my new place, the Steak Joynt, in Universal City,’ ” Newman says with a laugh.

As the name implies, Newman serves seafood at the Oyster House--for example, mussels and linguine, sea bass or swordfish with garden vegetables, shrimp scampi, a calamari steak stuffed with seafood, and crab cakes. You can also get garlic-roasted chicken, breaded chicken breasts Milanese with spinach in a garlic sauce, and eggplant pomodor. The shrimp scampi goes for $14.95, but as a rule prices are generally below $10.

Newman serves meat and chicken dishes at the Steak Joynt, with grilled salmon or halibut steaks tossed in for variety. The fish dishes aside, the Steak Joynt’s menu ranges from a center-cut 8-ounce top sirloin for $9.95 to a big 20-ounce T-bone for $18.95.

“We always had customers at the Oyster House who wanted something made with beef,” Newman explains. “And at the Oyster House, we cook everything on the menu right in front of our customers--and I mean right there, not behind glass.

“The problem is that if you cook meat that way, the aromas take over the whole room. We didn’t want that to happen, so we opened up the Steak Joynt last December to accommodate those customers who wanted to eat meat.”

Chef Lloyd, who holds sway in the Steak Joynt kitchen, cooked at Lawry’s Prime Rib in Beverly Hills and at several casinos elsewhere in Southern California. Larry Morteo is chef at the Oyster House, where Nance Outlaw runs the bar and takes no guff from anybody about her name.

The Oyster House is at 12446 Moorpark St., Studio City, (818) 761-8686. The Steak Joynt is at 4354 Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood, (818) 761-9899.

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If you love microbrewery beer, cock an ear for the opening of the Adobe Cantina in Agoura Hills, along what used to be the long, slow two-lane road that took people from the Valley to Santa Barbara before the Ventura Freeway took shape.

Bruce Spencer, who used to run a string of seafood restaurants in Santa Monica and the beach communities to the south, and his brother John hope to open their new cantina in time for Super Bowl XXXI on Sunday.

Whether or not they make that deadline, their bar will attest to the growing popularity of microbrewery beer by dispensing no fewer than 11 brands.

Among the beers will be two concocted and marketed by Bruce Spencer himself--Great White Maneater Red Ale and Great White Shark Attack Pale Ale, made by the North Coast Brewing Co. of Eureka to Spencer’s specifications. Also on tap will be Pike’s Pale Ale, Oregon Honey Beer, and a stout made by the Starbuck’s coffee folks, who know a thing or two about making things dark and rich and thick enough to require ingesting with a spoon.

For the really adventurous, Spencer will pour a harvest wheat beer made by another Eureka brewer, the Lost Coast Brewery. The beer is unfiltered, so it serves up cloudy, not clear.

For stolid souls wholly lacking in imagination, the bar will also dispense Bud Light.

And for those who also want to eat, the cantina will offer such dishes as chicken, tri-tip steak, and baby-back ribs done either on the grill or in a slow smoker. Spencer also plans to cook some seafood and a sprinkling of Mexican dishes.

The site for his restaurant was a chicken ranch in the old days, long before urbanization brought people down the Calabasas grade into the Conejo Valley.

Actor Marc Alaimo, who plays the Cardassian alien Gul Dukat on the television series “Deep Space Nine,” is a partner in the new cantina.

The Adobe Cantina is just east of the Kanan Road exit off the Ventura Freeway, at 29100 Agoura Road, Agoura Hills, (818) 991-3474.

Juan Hovey writes about the restaurant scene in the San Fernando Valley and outlying points. He may be reached at (805) 492-7909 or fax (805) 492-5139 or via e-mail at JHovey@compuserve.com