By Providence Cicero
Special to The Seattle Times

In Bellevue Square, where cacophonous chain restaurants serving gargantuan portions are the norm, Ristorante Luciano is an anomaly, as was its Bellevue Place predecessor, Sans Souci.

Luciano Bardinelli is progenitor of both. Regarded by many as an avatar of refined Italian cuisine, his local dynasty goes back at least 20 years to the original Settebello in Seattle, which helped wean locals from spaghetti and meatballs, giving them a taste for risotto and osso buco. Paparazzi, Stresa, Italianissimo and Sans Souci followed. All have closed or been sold over the years, leaving Luciano as the sole standard bearer.

Given its shopping-mall locale (in the space that once housed Pallino Pastaria) the menu wisely veers from the low-end to the lofty. Thus mall trawlers can nibble on pizza or pasta, chicken Caesars or fried calamari, while the expense-account crowd from adjacent office towers splurges on $30-plus dinner entrees. Prices are less at lunch, when entrees peak at $21.50.

The pizza is available at lunch and dinner. It's very good, the breadlike crust supple but sturdy. A bouquet of fragrant basil adorns the Margherita ($9 lunch/$12 dinner), leaving the diner to distribute the pungent leaves over the blistered mozzarella. The more adventurous might try tuna with red onion and capers or "La Bianca" — a white pizza topped with brie, parmesan, speck (smoked ham) and arugula.

Pasta dishes run the gamut from baked to tossed to stuffed. Some, like lasagne, cannelloni and linguine with clams, are only offered at lunch. Paglia e fieno alla romeo appears on both menus, and splitting an order turned out to be smart. This extravagant toss of green and white noodles with cream, peas, prosciutto and mushrooms is blanketed with béchamel and broiled until bubbly and brown. It's comfort food with bling.

Agnolotti, a stuffed dumpling traditionally shaped like a triangular priest's hat, is presented here as ravioli squares. Plumped Piedmont-style with a savory puree of beef, chicken and cheese, they shine in a fresh-tasting tomato-basil sauce. Not so the mezzalune, crab-stuffed half-moons mired in an oil-slick with stewed tomatoes.

Green beans subbed for the advertised lemon spinach meant to accompany bistecca de maiale ($26), a chubby pork chop, pink and moist but in need of salt and pepper — a forgivable sin given the butter-enriched pan gravy scented with rosemary and the well-seasoned diced beetroot rounding out the plate. The ubiquitous green beans turn up again alongside crisp oven-roasted potatoes on a plate of lemony veal scaloppine scattered judiciously with capers and artichoke hearts ($31).

Well-executed classics like that, along with excellent fried calamari, zuppa frantoiana, a homey vegetable soup thick with creamy white beans, or the Settebello salad — a mound of finely chopped greens riddled with salami, prosciutto and cheese — are reason enough to seek out Ristorante Luciano. But so is the mood: It's gracious in a European manner, and soothing in a way that its neighbors are not.

Unwind at the snug bar or in the rosy glow of the grandly proportioned dining room. Decorated in an Old World meets Restoration Hardware style, it's amply endowed with elegance, from the white napery to the polished wood floors inlaid with slate. The restaurant is formal but far from stuffy and the congenial staff all seem to speak with an Italian accent.

In times past, Bardinelli was famously demanding and attentive to detail. He would move restlessly about his restaurants with eyes everywhere at once. These days his chiseled features and leonine shock of white hair still make him easy to spot. But he's mellower now, less ready to pounce, more like the lion in winter than the king of the restaurant jungle.