Beyond Urban Rustic

Pastas may not be a priority here — that would be the tremendous rotisserie meats — but they are among the best in town at the moment: stiff little ravioli stuffed with a bracingly bitter dose of grilled radicchio, soft corkscrews with a mint-infused lamb ragout, pappardellewith an almost chocolatey sauce made with braised veal cheeks. The tagiolini here, tossed with shrimp and lemon, have a superb, springy texture, almost alive under your teeth.

And look at those meats: glistening, woodsmoke-infused slabs of pork belly stuffed with fennel and dill; drippingly rich duck with orange; mahogany-skinned squab enveloping a rich stuffing of shiitake mushrooms flavored with strong herbs. Sometimes there are big pork shanks braised to a surpassing softness and served with a final dusting of chopped pistachio nuts that turn out to add just the right amount of sweetness to the dish.

La Terza is not yet the best restaurant in Los Angeles. A salad of chickpeas and corn was kind of pointless, like something you might put together yourself at a salad bar. And the desserts, although the recipes come from Nancy Silverton, are not quite together yet — the pastry cream in a torta della nonnalast week tasted of uncooked flour, and the olive-oil ice cream with sea salt, a specialty of the New York restaurant Otto, was oddly bland, although the ricotta fritters with sour cherries are reliably delicious.

But still, who needs dessert when you can have Angelini’s trifolati, a traditional Italian kidney stew that he garnishes with fried sweetbreads. What we’re talking about, for those less versed in innard cookery, is a dish of crisply sautéed cattle pancreas on a bed of renal fragments. But those fragments, the kidneys, melted down in warm olive oil and simmered in wine, are sensational — funky, yes, but delicately chewy and with a depth of flavor scarcely imaginable to those who confine their palates to conventional meats, and a glossy refinement that is only heightened by the last-minute scattering of fresh herbs. In Viareggio, trifolati may just be a Thursday lunch special. In Los Angeles, a couple of blocks from the Beverly Center, it is a revelation.

La Terza, 8384 W. Third St.; (323) 782-8384. Lunch Mon.–Fri. 11:30 a.m.–2:30 p.m., dinner Mon.–Fri. 5:30–11 p.m., brunch Sat.–Sun. 10 a.m.–2:30 p.m. Full bar. Valet parking. AE, MC, V. Dinner for two, food only, $58–$96.