Long Island Restaurants

Arturo's

When the stock market gyrates, the economy keeps sinking, the rest of the news frightens, and Halloween seems only a prelude to Election Day, you really need Arturo's.

The venerable restaurant has undergone some renovations, but none that will make you think the entire mondo has turned unsteady. Everything changes. Except Arturo's.

This warm and welcoming place presides on the Nassau-Queens border, offering the pleasures of a traditional Italian kitchen from antipasti to zabaglione.

The kitchen is consistent. The service: exceptional. And, if you're lucky, a charming, sweet-voiced guitarist will be here, singing tableside requests in more than a few languages. Recession and anxiety stop at the door. Everyone is having a very good time.

That cart of cold antipasti ensures it. Nibble on the restaurant's torta primavera, a flavor-packed layering of cured meats, cheese, vegetables and crepes. Pick on the glistening seafood salad. Have a cracked olive or two. Finish the tomato-laden bruschetta that materializes with your menu.

The hot antipasti are familiar and tasty, but sometimes overcooked. Best of the group is the eggplant rollatine. The singed include baked clams and stuffed mushrooms. If the stuffed artichoke is among the nightly specials, your decision already is made.

Stracciatelle, the classic spinach-and-egg-drop soup, is fortified with nuggets of chicken. The tomato-tinted tagiolini pasta e fagioli is generous enough to be an entree.

Pastas may be ordered as appetizers, main courses or middle courses. Consider an expertly prepared, richly Roman spaghetti alla carbonara; turn south with the full-bodied fusilli all'Amatriciana. For a very hearty dish: farfalle tossed with rings of sweet sausage, garlic, olive oil and broccoli rabe. Linguine with white clam sauce also is textbook.

But you can skip the heavyweight gnocchi in a pesto sauce that underscores summer has departed. Seafood ravioli are hard-edged. And risotti aren't the kitchen's highlights, either. There's barely a whiff of white truffle rising from a pricey, dry risotto.

Forgo the rather mild Caesar salad in favor of the union of greens and vegetables, or the satisfying tricolor and spinach-mushroom-bacon productions.

Seafood tops the main courses. Striped bass alla Livornese arrives moist, superbly sauced, rife with olives and tomatoes. The Chilean sea bass oreganata is a snowy, well-seasoned swimmer. Delicate Dover sole meunière is filleted as neatly and efficiently as it is prepared.

It's hard to resist the house's steak alla pizzaiola, a juicy sirloin awash in scarlet sauce, spiked with peppers, mushrooms, garlic, basil and oregano. The grilled veal chop and the osso buco are its prime competitors. Veal chop alla Milanese, pounded, breaded and capped with a tricolor salad, can be overdone.

A gratis bowl of fresh fruit will bridge the relaxed move from entree to dessert. And you'll enjoy the dessert cart: creamy cheesecakes, freshly filled cannoli, sweet fruit tarts.

But Arturo's is known for its superb zabaglione, a deluxe, foamy, lush delight, deftly whisked into being, and spooned onto berries and vanilla ice cream. The warm-cool combo, with its Marsala soul, is irresistible.

The world is better already.

Reviewed by Peter Gianotti, 10/27/02.

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