Don’t be fooled by the red and green color scheme at the new, gay-owned Viva Pasta in Hillcrest. The eatery isn’t your typical Italian haunt, but rather a trend-setting, transcontinental concept of fast organic meals developed by young Florian Ritt, who arrives to the hood from his native Austria, armed with a charmingly determined approach to healthier eating.

Ritt’s conspicuous accent and youthful looks are as fetching as the hipster design he chose to transform the former Capriotti’s sandwich shop into his own little den of natural delights. Stark white wallpaper imported from Italy is speckled with tomato-headed, basil-winged butterflies (the restaurant’s mascot), adding whimsy to the bright, spanking-clean atmosphere punctuated also by a wall niche displaying green apples. Small sparkly globe lights dangle from the ceiling over black banquettes strewn with Kelly-green vinyl pillows. And the staff is outfitted in red – button-up shirts for the guys and stewardess-type jump suits for the gals, both accoutered with unisex black neck scarves.

Gone is the imposing sandwich counter that took up seating space when it was Capriotti’s. Now you order from a much smaller counter off to the side, grab a fresh-brewed iced tea nestled in ice buckets a few feet away and seize a table as the four-minute countdown begins before your pasta is ready. That’s the benchmark Ritt has adopted into his service standard starting from the moment you place an order.

With the exception of a short wait time, my companion summed up the newfangled scheme quite accurately. “It’s like the Jamba Juice concept applied to food,” he said.

According to Ritt’s arithmetic, there are more than 2,000 pasta possibilities that emerge from a pick-and-choose menu offering seven pasta cuts, seven sauces (all homemade), seven “proteins,” seven veggies and four different spices. We contrived three of them.

The eatery also features nine different organic salads assembled throughout the day, which are packaged and neatly displayed in a refrigerator case housing Italian sodas, fruit juices, sandwiches and fresh desserts such as low-sugar chocolate mousse lumped into plastic cups. “Viva breakfasts” featuring egg dishes and European pancakes will be introduced in the coming weeks.

We kicked off with two of the salads – a caper-adorned arrangement of spring lettuces prettied up with fairly fresh smoked salmon and shrimp, plus quartered hard-boiled eggs, black olives, onions and lemon wedges. Resembling more of a fruit plate was the “blue cheese sensation” brimming with berries, grapes, green apples and lettuce topped generously with blue cheese crumbles. Dressings are made in-house, such as lip-smacking balsamic vinaigrette, a thin but flavorful “American ranch” and a firm, robust blue cheese.

Cooked-to-order pasta dishes are prepared by “Viva food artists,” a term Ritt has coined in his ambitious effort to brand the venture as he prepares to open a second location Downtown early next year. (The eatery’s name was even written on the bathroom mirror the night we visited – in what looked like lipstick.)

The first noodle concoction we tried was whole-wheat fusilli, corkscrew pasta tossed in a sauce called “Viva pure vegetable” that came loaded with coarsely diced carrots, zucchini, eggplant and onions in a light tomato base. Chunks of fennel-infused sausage and tasty rosemary-turkey meatballs served as our choice of meat, which adequately compensated for skipping over the spice options – garlic, hot pepper flakes, onion or basil oil.

Skim milk and a speck of cream form the basis for the “Viva white dream” sauce, a no-guilt Alfredo revealing hints of herbs and nutmeg that we paired with penne pasta, mushrooms and bright-green, blanched broccoli – alas, a pasta dish cloaked in white cream sauce that didn’t leave me feeling as though I had consumed lead weights.

My favorite dish was egg fettuccini with bolognese that we teamed up with bell peppers and red pepper flakes, the latter imparting a necessary zip to the homey-tasting meat sauce. Compared to classic bolognese packing dense amounts of ground beef, Viva’s recipe uses a looser measure of meat, making it significantly less hardy, yet with a slow-simmered flavor that effectively pacified our tongues.

The sauce category also features arrabiata, pesto and another made with shrimp. And in addition to turkey meatballs and sausage, other meat choices include grilled chicken or shrimp, steamed salmon and ahi tuna. They’re referred to on the menu as “Vivamins.”

The 25-year-old Ritt makes no claims of running an Italian restaurant, given the fact that he spent a couple of years traveling through Europe, the Middle East and Asia “researching ingredients” and observing the world’s modern-day pasta trends. In doing so, he’s combined his love for organic foods with a soft-core approach for keeping it low fat.

“Everything’s always fresh. We don’t even have a freezer in the kitchen,” he said.

Whether you dine in or take out, the word “Viva” quickly becomes synonymous with good eats served with a pinch of vogue.