PASTA PERFECTION AT CAVI CUCINA.

Byline: Larry Lipson Restaurant Critic

FINDING INTERESTING, SOMEWHAT UNFAMILIAR pasta opportunities at a new little Italian restaurant in the suburbs can be a pleasant surprise.

It happened at the recently opened Cavi in Newhall.

Cavi, evidently meaning cave in Italian, hardly resembles a cave. It is small and offers a narrow dining room painted a spotless white with a few faux peekaboo bricks on the walls and attractive, comfortable ash-tone furnishings.

The kitchen, seen immediately by entering customers, produces many of the most popular pastas (even spaghetti and meatballs at lunchtime), but in the evening it tosses its spaghetti with the much more alluring combination of clams, garlic, bottarga (dark gray mullet roe) and a wine sauce ($13).

Yes, there's linguine with clams and mussels ($12.50) here, but there's also linguine mixed with pink grapefruit and fresh crab meat ($12.50). This creation, enhanced with a touch of cream, comes forth dramatically spilling out of a peeled half grapefruit.

It's superb.

The pastas here are apparently never mushy and never overly firm. They're the kind of ``al dente'' that means perfectly textured ``to the tooth,'' not abhorrently stiff and starchy.

For example, a rarely seen, delightful Sardinian pasta called ``malloreddusu'' ($11) of short, squiggly, ribbed tubes paired with Italian sausage and bathed in a lilting tomato sauce, provides a gratifying and savory departure from the norm.

Any robust red wine should be the right companion to this pasta.

Ditto for Cavi's pappardelle and lamb ($12.50) recipe boosted with a red wine and tomato sauce.

Also, on occasion, the kitchen comes up with an outstanding off-menu pasta special, as it did one day at lunchtime with its puffy, fluffy, spinach gnocchi in a creamy gorgonzola sauce ($11).

This is gnocchi (Italian potato-flour dumplings) at its best, fashioned the exact way it should be.

Call it magnifico.

Beyond pasta, soups ($5 at lunch, $6 at dinner) are always a good indicator of a kitchen's worth.

Thankfully, here at Cavi there's a soup challenge every day, which means forget minestrone and cook up a pot that's different.

One day the deep white bowl was generously filled with a dark, rich, triple onion soup. It was so good I forgot to ask what three onion varieties were used.

Another time, Cavi's productive kitchen served up a delicious carrot soup with a hint of curry.

Obviously, entrees cannot be dismissed. Main-course plates like veal scaloppine with porcini sauce ($19.50) rate here as satisfactory or better.

Diners will find chicken breast, sausage, lamb chop and one changing fresh fish item among them, even a pork scaloppine dish.

As for endings, Cavi delivers desserts ($5 each) like a lemon mousse gelato in a parfait glass or a crunchy cannoli. Each embraces palates with its own brand of sweet farewell.

But it's those nifty, unusual pastas that'll ensure my return.

Larry Lipson, [phone]

larry.lipson(at)dailynews.com

CAVI CUCINA ITALIANA

Food: Three stars - Service: Three stars - Wine: Three stars

Where: 23754 Lyons Ave., Newhall.

Phone: [phone].

Meals/hours: Open for lunch from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Dinner from 5 to 9 p.m. daily except Tuesday, to 9:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Closed Tuesday.

Food type: Italian.

Cost: Starters from $6 to $11.50, pastas and entrees from $9.50 to $23.50, desserts $5 each.

Credit cards: All major.

Patio dining: No.

Parking/valet: Free parking lot.

Full bar: No; beer and wine only.

Wine/corkage: Limited selection of around 30 labels priced from $18 to $90 that include numerous Italian bottlings. Several wines by the glass at $5 and $6. Corkage: $10.

Music/entertainment: No.

Takeout/delivery: Yes on takeout, no on delivery.

Reservations: Suggested.

CAPTION(S):

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Photo:

Cavi Cucina Italiana co-owner Antonio Viscito, left, and co-owner/chef Tonino Cardia display a pair of pasta dishes, including the linguine with clams and mussels, foreground, at their Newhall restaurant.

John Lazar/Staff Photographer