Can Cheese-Lover’s Shangri-La Melt a Body-Conscious Beach Community?

It’s the cheese.

Osteria Dabbasso, a handsome basement space that recently housed the short-lived Andre’s and before that Laguna Beach’s longtime favorite Kachina, is now a restaurant belonging to Italian-born chef Vincenzo Amodeo.

Amodeo, as it happens, also operates a successful restaurant called Tutto Pasta in Madison, Wis., of all places. And he has the radical idea that people in Laguna will like platters overflowing with food richly laced with cheese, the way it’s served at Italian restaurants in the Badger State.

Helloooo.

Not that his Laguna osteria is without charm. It’s tucked below a Forest Avenue art gallery; you enter it by descending a narrow staircase. Paintings of Florence and Venice (by an Italian artist named Franco Masci) crowd the burnt sienna walls of the main dining room, where you sit on cane chairs and eat from white tablecloths graced by fresh tiger lilies.

The main room is rather cramped, but if you crave more space, there are four tables on a small patio, shielded by canvas umbrellas emblazoned with the logo of an Italian espresso producer. No matter where you sit, you’ll be served by waiters clad in black T-shirts and white baker’s hats, and you won’t be able to escape the dulcet tones of singer Andrea Bocelli, this year’s Celine Dion.

Amodeo’s menu is as big as his portions, and it can be a bit daunting to wade through. So while you’re deciding what to order, you can nibble on bread sticks, a springy focaccia and some complimentary olive dip, all three of which are quite good.

They are so good, in fact, that they render the very first appetizer on the menu redundant. Crostini bruschettati is simply toasted focaccia with a variety of toppings that include a nice chopped tomato and basil checca, a cheesy pesto and the olive paste. The olive paste is the best of the three, so you wonder why you’d pay extra.

Besides, there are lots of other appetizers where that one came from. Bresaola--flavorful air-dried beef served on a bed of arugula--makes a nice, light beginning, though the meat is sliced a little thick, making it pretty chewy; it would be better if sliced thinner.

Melanzane infornate, which is baked eggplant rolled in seasoned bread crumbs, would easily feed three as an appetizer. It appears to be an entire eggplant topped with a hearty marinara sauce and crowned with a thick blanket of cheese.

I didn’t care for my cream of asparagus soup, because the pasty consistency reminded me of a packaged soup. But the minestrone has a nice homemade taste.

And every salad I’ve tried here has been right on the money, starting with insalata spinaci e pignoli: baby organic spinach leaves with pine nuts and oyster mushrooms in a Dijon mustard dressing subtly sweetened with honey. Insalata cappesante is a refreshing salad of grilled sea scallops in a tangy orange vinaigrette. The Caesar salad may have too much Parmesan for some people, but the anchovy-rich dressing is delicious.

Which brings us to pizzas. Amodeo is from southern Italy, so you know that his pizzas will have a yeasty crust, a heady marinara sauce and piquant toppings. However, they’re topped with an American innovation: a thick quilt of cheese.

In the Badger State, where they have a vested interest in whole-milk mozzarella, the cheese obsession is ingrained. But it seems out of place in body-conscious Laguna, and I observed my guests pulling off about two-thirds of the cheese. In fact, the pizza with Parma ham is very good once most of the cheese is removed, and so is the traditional pizza margherita, simply constructed with mozzarella, fresh tomato and basil.

Most of Amodeo’s pastas are imaginative and filling. Penne ai latticini is a cheese-maker’s fantasy, rich to the point of absurdity. The pasta is sauteed with olive oil, garlic, Gorgonzola, Fontina, mascarpone and mozzarella cheeses in a Pinot Grigio cream sauce. The chewy triangolini (triangular ravioli with a mushroom and cheese filling) come drenched in a grainy walnut cream sauce. There is a hearty lasagna positively buried under a thick, meaty Bolognese style ragu.

Next to those pastas, farfallette al salmone seems positively ascetic. It’s merely a heap of bow-tie pasta tossed with olive oil, Norwegian salmon, plum tomatoes, vodka, cream and caviar.

Don’t look to the main dishes for any respite. Salsiccia d’arista, for instance, is three enormous links of grilled sausage on a bed of mashed potatoes, framed by four huge wedges of stiff polenta.

Gamberoni (giant blue prawns grilled in their shells) and the broiled rack of lamb in a Chianti rosemary sauce are both good, and staggeringly well priced at $14.95. Veal scaloppine are topped Valdostana style with prosciutto and Fontina; they aren’t bad either, though the veal would be more tender if pounded thoroughly.

If you hang on until dessert, there’s a raft of good choices. One is panna cotta, a creamy baked custard with a nontraditional but tasty caramelized top. Another is a fresh fig tart, rich with ripe fruit on a nice flaky pastry.

Yet another is a multilayered ice cream concoction (cassata) laden with dried fruit.

Of course, if this were really Italy and not Laguna Beach, a little cheese would be appropriate at this juncture.

Osteria Dabbasso is moderate to expensive. Antipasti are $5.95 to $9.95. Pastas are $7.95 to $14.95. Secondi are 12.95 to $17.95.

BE THERE

Osteria Dabbasso, 222 Forest Ave., Laguna Beach. (949) 494-0495. Open 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Sunday-Thursday, 11 a.m.-11 p.m. Friday-Saturday. All major cards.