Top Chef gets skewered

LAT restaurant critic Irene Virbila rarely gives out zero stars, but she made an exception for the new Firenze Osteria in Toluca Lake. That's where one of the more popular "Top Chef" contestants, Fabio Viviani, is running the kitchen. Well, we think he's running the kitchen: On one visit, Virbila was told that Viviani was "somewhere in the Midwest" and on another occasion he was spending much of his time in the front of the house pressing the flesh. She liked the service, but as for the food...

The 18-ounce rib-eye steak at $38.95 is so average that the grilled asparagus that comes with it outshines the beef. And the special sweetbread dish that night is as unattractive as can be, a long rectangular plate with the sweetbreads dribbled with a sticky red wine or Port reduction that's far too strong for the mild-mannered meat. Awful.

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We order a slew of dishes. To start are fried calamari and "tempura" zucchini, which you'd think might be airy and light but are, instead, heavy and greasy. Downright clunky. Beef carpaccio with roasted mushrooms -- and crumbled blue cheese, olive oil and balsamic reduction -- is overkill. I find myself wolfing down the bland minestrone. At least it tastes like country soup.

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A third visit doesn't add much new information: The roast chicken is tasty if oily, and the roast potatoes are too, but the stuffed pastas may be the worst I've ever encountered anywhere, big thick ugly things with either a butternut squash and ricotta filling that has the texture of baby food or, in the case of the braised short rib ravioli, a dry, almost sawdust-like filling. Oh, and Viviani is again out of town.

Not sure how this scathing review will affect business - some folks will want to check it out just because it's Fabio's place. But small-scale celebrity-hood only gets you so far.