North Cañon Drive

With the so-called help going to Walter’s, where do the helped go? One can see lots of jewelry and taut skin line up at lunch time in the portals of La Scala. Compared to Walter’s, La Scala is a relative newcomer to Cañon, and many say it has never been the same since moving from its original Santa Monica Boulevard location a dozen-plus years ago. The red booths, many of the staff and the famous chopped salad are still around, but the charm (which included the lunch spot La Scala Boutique and, for favored regulars, a booth right in the kitchen) and La Scala’s standing in the culinary world have diminished. The food was, and is, American Italian — way too much sauce on the pasta, salads of iceberg lettuce. Order the chopped salad and the lasagna, which is meaty, rich, and has chunks of hard-boiled egg. Despite the decline in quality and allure, La Scala still packs ’em in.

Il Pastaio, on the corner of Cañon and Brighton, was Drago’s first casual café, and its original concept — carpaccio, salad, pasta and risotto — remains sound. The corner room is sunny and European in feel, with the maximum possible number of small tables crammed together. An older Frenchman broods solo over latte and the Figaro; co-workers split salads, swap office gossip. Try the sturdy, chewy garganelli with broccoli and sausage — it’s terrific when not too salty (the chef does like his salt shaker). Spelt spaghetti dressed in ricotta and lemon zest has a sublime simplicity. Best risottos include wild mushroom and mascarpone, and the remarkable black squid-ink risotto, which looks like gravel and tastes like heaven.

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Caffe Roma

350 N. Canon Drive
Beverly Hills, CA 90210

Category: Restaurant > Italian

Region: Beverly Hills

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Edelweiss Chocolates

444 N. Canon Drive
Beverly Hills, CA 90210

Category: Restaurant > Dessert

Region: Beverly Hills

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Il Pastaio

400 N. Canon Drive
Beverly Hills, CA 90210

Category: Restaurant > European

Region: Beverly Hills

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Il Tramezzino

454 N. Canon Drive
Beverly Hills, CA 90210

Category: Restaurant > Bakery

Region: Beverly Hills

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Mulberry Street Pizzeria

347 N. Canon Drive
Beverly Hills, CA 90210

Category: Restaurant > Italian

Region: Beverly Hills

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Nic's Restaurant & Martini Lounge

453 N. Canon Drive
Beverly Hills, CA 90210

Category: Bars/Clubs

Region: Beverly Hills

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Porto Via Bar and Bistro

424 N. Canon Drive
Beverly Hills, CA 90210

Category: Restaurant > American

Region: Beverly Hills

Photos

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More About

• Beverly Hills (California)
• Wolfgang Puck
• Darcy Muenchrath
• Foods
• Food and Cooking

South, past Smith and Hawken, Xi’an, a big, sunny, very noisy and reasonably priced Chinese lunchroom, occupies the former postmodern digs of a short-lived Italian establishment. Here, older couples walk over from Crescent Drive condos, and workers stroll over from the office buildings and shops for the lunch specials (entrée with soup, $6.95–$9.95). The food is standard American-Chinese — chopsticks bestowed on request; beside us, lingerie salesmen swap catalogs for "Passionate Playthings" over fluorescent-red sweet-and-sour chicken and classic Chinese chicken salad. There’s little discernible difference between Szechuan shredded beef and Kung Pao shrimp. Even the fortunes in the fortune cookies are bland: "You could be a lawyer."

Down a shop-lined passageway into a central courtyard sits Caffe Roma. It could be a quiet side-street sidewalk café in Rome or France; indeed, Italian and French float in the air. Outside, a fountain trickles and the occasional Gauloise spikes the drift of cigarette smoke. Inside, a pizza maker slaps dough into shape; salads and antipasti are displayed behind a sneeze-catcher. Caffe Roma’s good for a tête-à-tête with your real estate agent, a leisurely lunch or coffee away from the madding crowd, or a late-afternoon apéritif. The full Italian menu (pizza, pasta, carne e pesci) has been adapted specifically to Cañon Drive; if one person in your group wants a Walter’s tuna sandwich, another demands decent espresso, and a third suggests Il Pastaio for carpaccio and risotto, the happy compromise may be here, with reasonable versions of the desired dishes all in one place.

Transplanted New Yorkers who complain about how hard it is to find pizza by the slice on the West Coast should know about Mulberry Street Pizzeria, which dispenses slices warmed to order. The selection varies — you can always add toppings to a plain cheese slice. There’s something austere, pristine and enchanting about the white slice, sauced with ricotta and dotted with spinach. But the red pizzas, where an excellent tomato sauce is ladled generously onto the chewy-crisp-thin crust, are better yet; I recommend the lasagna-style pizza, featuring Bolognese sauce with concentric moats of thinned ricotta.

The 200 block of Cañon Drive once belonged to the Bistro; today it’s all Chasen’s. Another émigré to the street, Chasen’s, like La Scala before it, proved another disappointment. It’s hard to say if the new version of the venerable old steak house merely showcased what was always lacking in hobo steaks and Chasen’s chili, or if indeed a dip in quality has occurred. At any rate, Chasen’s clubby, formal ambiance and sky-high prices have great appeal in B.H.: Just like the regulars at Walter’s who stake out a counter seat and order "the usual," chilly rich folk like to have their table, their server and their usual. Humans will be human.

On the very same spot where the quintessential ladies’-lunch hangout, Bistro Gardens, once thrived (Nancy Reagan was a regular), Wolfgang Puck and his in-house designer Barbara Lazaroff opened Spago Beverly Hills. Raffi, one of the Gardens’ beloved waiters, carries on at Spago, and his knowledge of the neighborhood clientele has been invaluable. Spago is at once a neighborhood place, a destination restaurant for all L.A. and a magnet for tourists. It’s also the largest, most ambitious fine-dining restaurant in the city — on many nights, the kitchen serves close to 500 dinners. On a Friday night, when kitchen and staff are in full swing, the tables are filled, the bar is packed, the place runs like a symphony. Spago is famous for being a tough reservation, and part of the problem comes from the institutionalized loyalty to long-term, devoted customers. The rest of us eat happily early or late.