Something new under the Tuscan sun

Why was it we strayed from Italian? Wandered off into Asian fusion and French techniques? Muddled around in the purgatory of comfort food -- mountains of mac-and-cheese and stodgy meatloaf? Oh, never mind. Atkins and carbohydrate fears be damned, Italian cuisine is back in vogue.

Step into La Morra, open just more than two months, and you'll see the relief on diners' faces. This two-floor restaurant in Brookline Village has a casual, open feeling with a warm patina on the wood tables and chairs and soft tones in colors. It's antitechno looking, and the ambience matches the unassuming friendliness of the staff.

Chef Josh Ziskin, who owns La Morra with his wife, Jennifer, is aiming for a rustic style in the food, too. In a phone interview, he says he studies old Italian cookbooks for ideas, wanting to stress the simplicity and purity of flavor in Italian food. The result is cuisine much closer to the real deal than many American interpretations.

Ziskin, who previously was the chef at the Tuscan Grill in Waltham, uses his ingredients carefully and teases out beautiful flavors from them. The meal starts with cicchetti, a Venetian version of tapas to eat with drinks or apertifs. Fried sage leaves envelope a touch of anchovy paste, its saltiness pleasant against the tongue. Fried olives are a textural and taste contrast, crisp outside and soft and sharp when you bite into them. A pate of salt cod is oddly bland, but another of chicken and duck livers with Vin Santo is deliciously earthy spread on wedges of toasted bread.

After the cicchetti, only a taste of antipasti seems necessary. One evening we choose the clams steamed with cherry peppers, only to find some minutes later that the last order is sold. So we settle on a leek and prosciutto torte to share, a sturdy custard-based pie in a good crust. A squash flan with a Parmesan fonduta, or fondue, is a more unusual choice, although it basically tastes like squash puree with melted cheese.

A $35 prix fixe menu for three courses without wine is offered nightly, and has some very interesting dishes on it. Luckily, they can be ordered separately so that a tiny salad of celery hearts with bottarga (a roe of tuna) and almonds can spark up the beginning of a meal with its intensity and sharp flavors.

Ziskin says that the pasta is made in the basement of the restaurant on a 1940s machine that "forces you to make good pasta" or it sticks. Tagliatelle with wild mushrooms from the prix fixe menu one evening is straightforward but excellent, silken strands of pasta in a simple, clean sauce. Medium-wide ribbons of fettucelle are twirled around soft nuggets of sweetbreads and then studded with bits of guanciale (pig's cheek similar to pancetta) and chestnuts. It's a lovely dish, one that definitely speaks of a trattoria in the old country. And a lobster risotto has the same gentleness; its flavors melding into a pleasing whole.

But La Morra's flavor tone isn't all pastels. Braised shortribs with tomato and radicchio make a bold statement, tender meat and lots of vibrancy in the sauce. A porterhouse steak for two done in the Florentine style would easily show up many steakhouses. The meat covers the plate, flanked with well-salted arugula, and is a marvel of juicy tenderness. Often steak, ordered medium rare, is cut too thick and then seared hard on the outside so that the fibers seize up and the result is a tough piece of meat, no matter how much you're paying for it. Here the porterhouse is cut just right, grilled nicely and allowed to rest so that the meat is pliable and the flavor comes through beautifully.

Red wine-and-cumin braised calamari sounds fascinating, but this is the entree I found least successful. The squid is tender enough, but the sauce is muddy and lacking in distinction. Instead of the acidic taste I expected, the flavor is boring.

However, spit-roasted porchetta could make anyone a fan of La Morra. The pork shoulder stuffed with herbs, which Ziskin says is cooked as much as seven hours, melts in the mouth, and cracklings of the skin add an appealing crunch. Underneath the pork are ceci (chickpeas), which have absorbed all the juices from the pork. They're as irresistible as chocolate kisses, and it's impossible not to eat forkful after forkful.

La Morra's wine list has a good range with some decent prices and interesting excursions past the commonly seen vintages.

On an early visit, desserts are a little shaky. A chocolate budino (pudding) is dense and creamy, but a Meyer lemon tart is, curiously, lemon cream over shortbread cookies. A later visit shows a clearer focus: an arborio rice pudding with raisins and cinnamon that's manages to be both creamy and yet have texture. An espresso cake, really a thin layer of cake around a molten interior, may be just another form of the ubiquitous molten chocolate cake, but is still a delicious rendition.

Although La Morra's service, particularly by a second visit, could not have been more gracious, this is not a place to plan to rush through. There seem to be some starts and stops, with courses slow to come at times. And it's also not one of those big-portion places -- that's fine with me. You can enjoy a pasta course and have a few bites of a main course and not feel as though you've polished off a meal for three.

In fact, my main regret is that I won't be able to go back immediately to try more of La Morra's menu. The risotto with red wine and bone marrow seems to be calling me.