This time of year is just divine

Salvatore Marino, chef-owner of Il Grano, is pazzo -- crazy -- for tomatoes. This year he planted 74 tomato plants and more than 30 varieties in his home garden. Now that tomato season is at its height, he’s planned certain dishes around his lovingly tended tomatoes. And on Wednesdays he goes all out with an entire menu devoted to the pomodoro.

Walk in the door of his West Los Angeles ristorante and sitting on the bar is a bowl of some of the beauties picked that day. Green striped with chartreuse, gold, burgundy, orange, lipstick red: They come in all colors and shapes.

From now until the end of October, when the season more or less ends, Marino intends to put the tomato center stage. At lunch, he might be making a pressed panini with prosciutto, pancetta, turkey and cuore di bue, beefsteak tomato, or a Margherita pizza with fresh San Marzano tomatoes, mozzarella and sweet basil. He serves burrata with a “rainbow” of tomatoes too, but that’s perfectly normal in L.A. restaurants these days.

Come to one of his Wednesday night tomato extravaganzas, though, and you can choose from an entire page of dishes Marino is presenting for Il Grano’s Sagra del Pomodoro (tomato festival). The selection changes every week as inspiration strikes. One night there was a delicious green zebra gazpacho, an oxheart and Cherokee tartare with grilled Santa Barbara prawn, and grilled branzino with eggplant caviar and Juliet Grape puttanesca sauce.

Marino does homemade sausages and meatballs in a San Marzano sauce and wonderful pasta twisted like candy wrappers and filled with burrata in a sauce of tiny pendolo tomatoes. He’ll take Amish gold tomatoes, oven-dry them and toss them with spaghetti and bottarga.

Marino’s family comes from Naples, where the tomato rules in everything from pizza Margherita to eggplant Parmigiana, so it’s no wonder he has such a fascination with the exotic fruit. It’s worth noting that the tomato is not indigenous to Italy. It comes from the New World and, according to the Oxford Companion to Food, first appeared in a printed recipe in a Neapolitan book published in 1692.

On the East Coast, tomato season will wind down soon, but here, we can look forward to weeks more of glorious tomatoes. Let’s celebrate!

*

Il Grano

Where: 11359 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles

When: Sagra del Pomodoro, 5:30 to 10 p.m. Wednesdays; also open for lunch noon to 3 p.m. Mondays through Fridays and for dinner 5:30 to 10 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays. After 6 p.m., free metered parking in the lot behind the restaurant.

Cost (tomato dishes): appetizers, $6 to $12; pizza, $9 to $10; pasta, $8 to 12; main courses, $23 to $30. Desserts, $8.

Info: (310) 477-7886