When it comes to classic Italian-immigrant food, I’ve had wretched luck in San Diego finding lasagna and pasta dishes that aren’t plunged into darkness by goopy mantles of melted cheese or frightening pools of acidic and overcooked tomato sauces. So awful are some of the established mom-and-pop Italian eateries in town that I’ve skipped writing about them for fear of appearing like an incurable curmudgeon.

However, my despair turned to confidence last week in a mere bite of a meatball at Russo’s House, a newly opened restaurant in Hillcrest that marks the eatery’s second location since operating in Encinitas for the past 23 years.

The food at Russo’s has encouraging southern Italian roots. Retired founder Joe Russo is originally from Sicily and came to the area armed with recipes for classic sauces and homemade pastas, which new owner Jack Barouh and his wife, Celia, have resolutely preserved. We’re talking lusciously supple pasta noodles made fresh daily, smooth tomato sauces and fine Italian sausage imported from the mother country.

Russo’s replaces a succession of failed eateries (the last occupant was Talus Café), all of which grappled with a substandard kitchen that Barouh brought up to snuff with significant investment. A central outdoor patio featuring six lengthy rows of individual bracket shelves for tea lights is a draw, and it remains unchanged. The dining room is brightened up with lighter fabrics and Venetian carnival masks imported by Barouh. Yet the most welcoming element is the smell of pizza, pasta dishes and savory meat specialties cooked in marsala, piccata and Parmesan styles that infiltrate the sinuses upon entering.

Sweet tomato-basil soup offered in a weekly rotation wooed us with its creamy soft edge and subtle breath of white wine. Skipping over the usual caprese salad and minestrone soup, we cut to the chase with a nine-inch Russo’s Pizza made with a Mediterranean twist. Kalamata olives and plunks of feta cheese augmented the mozzarella and pepperoni topping. The thin, well-cooked crust passed our approval, although I could have withstood more (or any) oregano lacing the sauce.

The lasagna here is terrific and spares you the cheesy havoc you’ll find in other Italian restaurants. Barouh says it ranks among the biggest sellers at the Encinitas location, and no doubt it should do well in Hillcrest. Constructed with sheets of fresh pasta that seem to practically float above layers of stable, well-set ricotta, this isn’t the kind of lead-weight lasagna that leaves a lump in your stomach by the halfway mark. The pieces cut neatly to a fork and the not-too-dense Bolognese sauce is used judiciously, allowing you to actually see the layers inside.

From the pasta menu, you can match various noodle cuts to about six different types of sauces established by Joe Russo (pesto, clam sauce, Alfredo, and aglio e olio, to name a few) or choose instead from several specialty dishes authored by Barouh, which we did. His recipe for puttanesca, for instance, deviates slightly from traditional cookbook versions that typically include bits of anchovy melted into the olive oil base. Barouh omits the anchovies and beefs up the sauce with additional olives while keeping the garlic, capers and white wine in the mix. The sauce is served over curly linguini adorned with four large tiger shrimp – and the end result is quite pleasing.

The specialty list also includes seafood ravioli, rigatoni with Italian sausage and angel hair with olive oil, garlic, basil and diced tomatoes.

When determining a good Italian restaurant from a bad one, I often include two peripherals in my litmus test – the table cheese and the meatballs. The grated cheese at Russo’s is a powdery Romano sporting a nice strong flavor unlike those flavorless sawdust types I’ve encountered at other places. And the meatballs were divinely tender, which I’m guessing was achieved from extended braising in tomato sauce. No surprise fat globules or funky aftertaste from cheap beef here, although a few extra pinches of Italian herbs in the meat would have had me shouting “mama mia!”

Light and manageable was the Chicken Parmesan, which again suffocates in so many restaurants under too much sauce and mozzarella. Hurray for only the thin bedding of cheese atop our flattened chicken breast, which was gently breaded before frying and served with just enough fresh marinara as to not interfere with the scheme. Had a third party been with us to help devour Russo’s savory fare, I would have added to our repast a submarine sandwich stacked with salami, capicolla and imported Parma ham, moistened with homemade Italian dressing and served with a choice of soup or salad. Other sub choices include meatball, chicken pesto and caprese.

The wine list leans largely toward dry Italian varietals that play well with the food, although they might not sate those palates spoiled by jammy California reds, as demonstrated by a customer across the room I overheard asking for something sweeter. So let the desserts make due for now.

There’s of course tiramisu, which was sold out when we visited. Yet traditional Italian cheesecake made with whipped mascarpone cheese was tongue tingling and duly compensated, as was the super-airy chocolate mousse pie bursting with a rich cocoa flavor.

Service was friendly and attentive, not to mention fun and intimate given the restaurant’s warm, cozy confines. The eatery also sells fresh, non-frozen pasta bundles and sauces to go, although there isn’t a retail display case that tells you so. Simply ask for the take-out menu and you’ll be on your way to cooking meals at home that are no less authentic and delightful than what you could gobble down at Russo’s House.