DINING BEAT : IL TIRAMISU EXPANSION.

Byline: Larry Lipson

With all the restaurant activity along Ventura Boulevard in Sherman Oaks recently, it is no surprise to see that the expanding Il Tiramisu, 13705 Ventura Blvd., has gone from narrow, cramped cafe to dining room with full bar and wine service, and serving weekday lunches.

Chef-owner Roberto Carboni manages to balance quality food and prices deftly enough to keep increasing the restaurant's popularity. His new luncheon bill of fare presents all the favored pastas (ranging from $7 to $13, with most under $10) and salads ($4.50 to $9.50) plus several interesting house-baked focaccia sandwiches ($4.50 to $8), pizzas ($6.50 to $9), soups ($4 each), and meat and seafood entrees ($9 to $14).

And for lunchers who wish to eat light or vegetarian Italian-style bargain meals of alluring variety as well as substance, there's a daily salad and vegetable buffet for $5.95.

Information: [phone].

Tasty movies

Restaurant-related movies keep coming. Following the recently released ``The Big Night'' is ``A Chef in Love,'' an interesting tragi-comic foreign film with English subtitles about a hedonistic French chef who falls in love with a Georgian princess, opens a restaurant in Russian Georgia and becomes involved in the revolutionary happenings of that time. Several of the cooking and eating scenes are hilarious. It opens this weekend at Laemmle's Royal Theatre in West Los Angeles.

Dinner and circus

``Cirque du Soleil'' packages with or without tickets to the new show ``Quidam'' are now available from nearby Santa Monica restaurants on Ocean Avenue - I Cugini and Ocean Avenue Seafood. Three- and four-course dinners are $30 or $40, dinner and ticket packages are $80 and $85, and both dineries are pouring Veuve Clicquot bubblies. Information: I Cugini, [phone]; Ocean Avenue, [phone].

Etc.

Congrats to sommelier Sylvie Laly-Darr of Vida restaurant in Los Angeles. She's been picked to oversee wine service at the California Grill, a temporary on-site restaurant promoting California wines and foods at the VINEXPO 1997 trade show in Bordeaux, France, June 16-20.