3rd-Generation Italian : On the site of other eateries, Lugano triumphs with excellent main courses and low prices.

COSTA MESA — Lugano is a Swiss resort city at the edge of a splendid mountain lake. It’s also a spiffy new Italian restaurant within yodeling distance of South Coast Plaza.

The site is the one that started out as a yuppie fast-food place, Il Fornaio Cucina Expressa, and then became an Italian rotisserie (Il Fornaio Rosticceria). The trend embodied in Lugano is spelled out in the restaurant’s subtitle: Cucina del Mercato, or, market cuisine.

Visually, the place has scarcely changed. The room is a long, narrow miter box with an ambience best described as Euro-trash elegant. It has vaulted windows and a cathedral ceiling; faux marble statuary is set into the walls a good 10 feet above the tables.

If you come for the weekday continental breakfast, served on the patio, you soak up bright morning sun. After sunset, the room takes on a modicum of the old knockout European charm.

Owner Cristophe Boo, known for his Newport Beach lunch spot, Mezzanine at the Towers, has retained a coterie of chefs and waitresses from the restaurant’s Il Fornaio days, so the transition has gone smoothly.

The menu is simpler and less expensive, but it hasn’t lost the rustic appeal of the two earlier restaurants. Furthermore, Boo buys bread, biscotti and morning pastries from Il Fornaio, one of the best Italian bakeries around.

The lunch menu features Italian sandwiches (panini) served with greens and a piquant, salt-free potato salad. Schiacciatina is two slices of grilled focaccia wrapped around layers of thinly sliced ham, Fontina cheese, fresh mushrooms and marinated artichoke hearts. Salumi misti is basic Italian cold cuts (Genoa salami, mortadella, ham and provolone) on crusty filone bread. Panino al tacchino is not just any old turkey sandwich, made as it is with focaccia spread with a salty olive paste.

The lunch menu advertises a quick meal called Pasto Pronto with a guarantee: If you aren’t in and out of the restaurant within 30 minutes, you eat free.

There are three Pasta Pronto choices: insalata di pollo, a rich and satisfying chicken salad made with bacon, croutons and Parmesan cheese; rotisserie chicken served with roasted rosemary potatoes; or a soup and salad combination. I like the way the rotisserie chicken is perfumed with rosemary and garlic, but it needs to be more moist. If you have the soup, choose the flavorful minestrone over the starchy zuppa contadina, based on potatoes and beans.

Dinner offers an expanded version of the lunch menu. I’d come back for one more crack at the antipasto della casa, an attractively conceived platter of finger foods that includes fried calamari, various salami, involtini melanzane (grilled eggplant rolled around goat cheese), fat spears of chilled asparagus and a couple of large bruschetta brimming with chopped vine-ripened tomatoes.

The pizzas, only slightly larger than individual-sized pies at Pizza Hut, are light and a shade doughy, but the toppings are of high quality. The best is quattro stagioni, the four seasons: a tomato-and-cheese pizza divided into quadrants topped with ham, asparagus, artichokes and mushrooms, respectively. The simple pizza Margherita (tomato, cheese and basil) is good too.

Lugano makes a lot of pasta dishes, heavily sauced creations that make you wish there were more noodles. Two-thirds of the bowl of spaghetti Bolognese must be the meaty sauce. Capellini della Francesca has the lightest sauce of any Lugano pasta, an appealing blend of chopped Roma tomatoes, basil, garlic and good olive oil, but the portion is stingy. For the healthy appetite, a better choice would be ravioli di pollo, four dough discs filled with a light mousse of chicken and ricotta.

Many Italian restaurants are at their best at the first course (the primi), but Lugano’s strong suit is the main course. Spiedini alla Spoletina are expertly grilled skewers of lamb, sausage and chicken breast, gently scented with fresh fennel. Tagliata di manzo is a sliced sirloin steak served with a rich, green peppercorn sauce and flanked by a heady garlic potato puree. There is also braciolette di maiale alla Teatina, a lean, juicy pork chop wrapped in sage and unsmoked bacon.

At dessert, the delicious biscotti assortment comes from Il Fornaio Bakery, but the prepared desserts are equally stunning. They’re the work of a chef from Parma who has worked in the city of Lugano.

Bavarese al cioccolato tricolore is a terrific three-colored mousse of white, dark and milk chocolate. Crema cotta is just an Italian creme bru^lee, but it’s fragrant with vanilla, and the caramelized sugar crust crackles with intensity. Zabaglione alla Gritti is a great dessert for summer: assorted tiny berries and pieces of fresh melon smothered in a froth of whipped eggs, sugar and Marsala wine. Italian ice creams (gelati) are available all year in rotating flavors.

Lugano should be around all year, too, and, we hope, for several to come.

Lugano is moderately priced. Antipasti are $3.75 to $6.95. Pastas are $7.95 to $13.95. Main dishes are $8.95 to $13.95. Desserts are $3.75 to $4.95.

BE THERE

* Lugano, 650 Anton Blvd., Costa Mesa. (714) 668-0880. Open 7 a.m.-9 p.m. Monday, 7 a.m.-10 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday, 7 a.m.- 11 p.m. Friday, 11:30 a.m.-11 p.m. Saturday, 11:30 a.m.-9 p.m. Sunday.

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