For Tommaso Barletta, it's the cheese. As in the creamy, handcrafted variety his aunt made every morning after rising at 4 a.m. to milk the cows on the farm she and her husband owned five miles inland from Monopoli, the southeastern Italian seaport where Barletta grew up.

"Kids in this country grow up with the baking of chocolate chip cookies," Barletta says. "My earliest memories of the kitchen are of my aunt making me breakfast: toasted bread topped with warm, fresh ricotta sprinkled with sugar and a hint of cinnamon."

Barletta is sitting at the black marble bar of Tuscany Il Ristorante, the upscale Italian restaurant he opened 14 years ago in Westlake Village. But as he closes his eyes for a moment, it's clear he is recalling the experience of nibbling on homemade cheese in that Italian kitchen, where all the cooking was done in the fireplace.

"The richness and flavor of that ricotta ..." Barletta says dreamily, in thickly accented English. "I have traveled the world over and still cannot match that flavor, that freshness, that texture."

Is it any wonder he grew up to become a chef? Barletta thinks not.

"I spent more time (on the farm) than I did at home," he says. "The cows were milked twice a day. My dad and my uncle took me mushroom hunting, taught me how to recognize mushrooms and plants. ...

"From there, it gets in you," he adds, "from your father and the other generations, this passion about the land and what comes from it."

Again with the cheese

After stints as a chef or dining room captain in other people's restaurants in Europe and the United States, Barletta today is a self-made restaurateur and culinary ambassador.

His openness to the flavors and traditions of other countries is reflected in the spirits stocked on the mirrored shelves behind Tuscany's bar: drambuie from Scotland, tequila from Mexico, whiskey from Kentucky and bottles of port dating back to 1935.

Lest anyone question the focus of the restaurant's food, however, there also are nearly 30 bottles -- each of them different, with graceful necks and delicate handles -- of grappa, that lethal Italian brandy made from grapes.

Devised by executive chef Barletta, the menu provides several other clues. It serves up elegant interpretations -- squid-ink fettuccine, anyone? -- of Italian dishes that are worlds away from the slurpy, tomato sauce-covered manicotti and spaghetti seen every week on "The Sopranos."

"He has brought us some special things from Italy -- burrata cheese, for instance," says friend Phyllis Vaccarelli, owner of the combination kitchenware store and cooking school Let's Get Cookin' and its professional branch, the Westlake Culinary Institute.

Barletta also has used the mild, creamy cheese -- which originated near his childhood home and is made with triple cream and fresh curd in a mozzarella shell -- as a grace note in an heirloom tomato salad, a summertime favorite that features more than seven kinds of tomatoes and a sprightly vinaigrette.

During winter months, buratta is more likely to show up in a Tuscany special that features oven-roasted golden beets with balsamic vinegar.

"When I design a plate or a dish, I try to combine different sensations: sweetness and acidity, crunchy and creamy," Barletta explains.

The menu and the atmosphere are both a little looser at Rustico, which Barletta opened in October with help from a pair of nephews and Giuseppe Di Mola, a chef from his not-so-distant past.

Located in what used to be the Italian restaurant Ritrovo, Rustico features Barletta's take on rustic, Franco-Italian fare. Patrons may order escargot and bouillabaisse as well as orecchiette pasta with Italian sausage or provimi veal "Spezzatino" served in a clay pot.

"With Tuscany established as a dining destination for business, evening and private parties, we felt the area had great potential for more of a neighborhood, bistro-style place," Barletta says of Rustico. "It's a mix of southern French cuisine and southern Italian cuisine."

An early start

Barletta was 14 when he enrolled in a hospitality-industry school that each summer sent students to work in hotels and restaurants all over Europe. One summer might be spent gaining on-the-job training as a chef, the next as a maitre d', and the summer after that as a maitre d'hotel.

He served in England and France, where he picked up the very French but universally employed technique known as mise en place, or having all the ingredients needed for a dish prepared and ready to combine up to the point of cooking. In comparison, traditional Italian cuisine often calls for ingredients to be cooked together, creating a different blend of flavors, Barletta says.

"Here, we use French techniques, not to cook but in the way we organize the dish," he adds. "It's more expedient. Clientele in America, they don't want to wait that long for their food to come."

Barletta completed the course with a summer spent in the dining room of a much-lauded -- but now defunct -- hotel in Switzerland.

"Everything was cooked in the dining room in front of the customers," he recalls. "That was very appealing for me; I could get training of culinary skills and dining room direction.

"It's important to combine the two," he adds. "You can make the best filet mignon, but if it's not presented right in the dining room, you're in trouble."

Barletta came to the United States in 1980, in part to help open the Los Angeles restaurant Adriano's, then billed as one of the first Southern California restaurants to highlight the meats, cheeses and creamy risottos that typify northern Italian cuisine.

It was while working at Adriano's that Barletta met his wife, a fashion designer who frequented the restaurant. Debra and Tommaso Barletta married in 1982; a year later, the couple opened Cafe Tommaso near the intersection of Las Posas and Arneill roads in Camarillo. Di Mola joined on later as chef de cuisine.

"It was a very small place, 11 tables in the whole restaurant," Barletta recalls. "We started to do the type of cuisine that blended sophisticated but approachable dishes."

Three years later, a customer suggested they move the restaurant to the Westlake Plaza Center -- the shopping center he just happened to own. Uncertain about the location, the Barlettas spent a day sitting in their car in the parking, watching the foot traffic for the center's sole restaurant at the time.

"We couldn't believe there weren't more restaurants there," Tommaso recalls, "but it looked like the community was really supporting the one that was there, and that it might support another."

Next came a discussion about decor.

"She wanted to go modern. I wanted to go classic. So we went neoclassic," Tommaso says of the interior design at Tuscany, which features Debra's trompe l'oeil murals of a Tuscan landscape and of citrus trees dotted with birds.

Now, in addition to overseeing the menus and organizing the crews at his restaurants, Barletta teaches the occasional class at Let's Get Cookin' and writes a bimonthly wine column for Westlake Magazine. Subject for October: the wines of Spain. Subject for December: Sauternes, in the Bordeaux region of France.

Freed from the heat and clamor of the kitchen (where Gilberto Rangel has reigned as Tuscany Il's chef de cuisine for more than six years), Barletta can be found most evenings in the dining room, greeting patrons by name.

"Tommaso is one of the friendliest restaurant owners I know," Vaccarelli says. "He's always out in the front, greeting people and making friends.

"He brought the sophisticated restaurant concept to this area, but it's also like one big, happy family over there."

Celebrities ranging from actors Tom Selleck and Heather Locklear to sports figures Tiger Woods and Wayne Gretzky seem to agree, judging by their repeat visits.

"They tend to like the home-cooking sorts of dishes; Tom Selleck's favorite is liver and onions or a good steak or the Dover sole," Barletta says of the de facto celebrity endorsements.

Just don't stop by their table and ask them to say "cheese."

-- Lisa McKinnon's e-mail address is mckinnon@insidevc.com.