LENTINI []

1562 SECOND AVE., AT 81ST STREET (212) 628-3131

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THE Upper East Side offers a rude awakening for lovers of Italian cooking. The co-op-and- condo country from Bloomingdale’s to 86th Street is full of Italian restaurants. But most are too cheap to be any good or too expensive for every-night use.

It’s nice being able to choose between $10 pasta and $26 pasta. But what if you want $18 pasta, a happy medium between penny-pinching and pretentiousness?

Enter Lentini. This corner establishment came on the scene not long before 9/11. It got off to a fitful start, but recently became so popular it decided to open for lunch.

Part of its appeal is the setting – a spacious sea of rich, polished wood that’s as warm as the service, under an elegant ceiling.

Unlike nearby joints full of free-range tots, Lentini was made for grown-ups.

Lentini takes an adult approach to its cooking, too. Chef Giuseppe Lentini worked for years at long-established Elio’s. His menu is a soothing mix of southern Italian and Italian-American favorites, executed with care.

The lineup is so old-fashioned, you won’t find a single pesto sauce – a fair tradeoff for also doing without the clumsy acidic tomato sauces that rule these precincts.

Appetizers are conventional: Skip cookie-cutter baked clams ($10) for ethereal imported buffalo mozzarella ($11) or a sparkling salad of warm Italian lentils with goat cheese and red beets ($10).

Hearty pasta fagioli ($9) is dry and thick enough to reclassify as a pasta dish.

The real pasta lineup is underseasoned and limited; six of nine choices are spaghetti or linguine. Gramegna ($19), a C-shape egg noodle, stands out as a wild departure. It is topped with garden-fresh light tomato sauce, eggplant and dried ricotta.

I’d pass up the others for risotto with radicchio, gorgonzola cheese and mushrooms ($22) – about the best risotto you’ll find for the price, and possessed of the tantalizing tension between tactile rice and creamy sauce that only a master stirrer can pull off.

You don’t ordinarily think of meatballs as “gossamer,” but the kitchen slow-cooks chopped beef, eggs, milk-soaked bread and a touch of parmesan and pecorino cheeses to a mouth-melting lightness. They’re good enough to pass up the spaghetti half of the Wednesday night special ($18).

The kitchen has a way with veal, like scallopine in several styles ($18) or breaded cutlet on the bone ($27), topped with chopped tomato, onion and basil. All were expertly adorned, and tender enough to cut with a fork.

For dessert, lemon-filled cannoli ($8) was too tart for me, but I flipped over cassata ($10), a baroque Sicilian confection of sponge cake and ricotta topped with marzipan and colorful patches of glazed fruit.

Just as sweet is wine service that lays on proper-size glasses without your having to ask – rare in Italian restaurants, but second nature at laid-back Lentini.