Italian L.a.

Alp Is on Its Way

In a restaurant scene obsessed with the finer points of raw-artichoke salad and balsamic-drenched tagliata, Tre Venezie is one place that is clearly something different, a narrow Pasadena restaurant where the filled pasta is called casunzei instead of ravioli and filled with beets and poppy seeds instead of spinach and cheese; where the tripe is stewed with grappa-soaked raisins instead of tomato sauce; where the grilled fish comes soaked in vinegar, and where big meat means a smoking plateful of bollito misto — wonderful bollito misto — rather than a giant slab of T-bone steak. There are only a few restaurants in the United States specializing in the Slavic-tinged food of the mountainous northeastern regions of Italy — the wonderful Frasca in Boulder comes to mind — and Gianfranco Minuz’s Pasadena dining room could easily pass for one of the better trattorias in Udine. The cooking, mostly in the Slavic-influenced style of Friuli, northeast of Venice, is superb. True, the careful authenticity must be balanced against the fact that a nice dinner here can cost not much less than a roundtrip ticket to Venice itself, and that you won’t find much to drink here under $50 or so. But where else in Los Angeles are you going to find homemade rosolio, an intensely sweet liqueur made from milk? 119 W. Green St., Pasadena, (626) 795-4455.

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Valentino Restaurant

3115 Pico Blvd.
Santa Monica, CA 90405

Category: Restaurant > Italian

Region: Santa Monica

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More About

• Mauro Vincenti
• Nancy Silverton
• Venice (Italy)
• Main Dish Recipes
• Ethnic and Regional Cuisines

Crusty Old-timers

At Pizzeria Mozza, which strictly speaking may not be Italian, although it could scarcely be interpreted as anything else, Nancy Silverton has half the city arguing over the paradigm of what real pizza might look like, and the other half trying to land a table at the restaurant. Her pizza is airy and burnt and risen around the rim, thin and crisp in the center, neither bready in the traditional Neapolitan manner nor wispy the way you find pizza in the best places in Tuscany, neither Rome-crisp nor Puglia chewy. The crust is sweet and bitter, saltyand circled by crunchy charred bubbles that may or may not be snipped off by Silverton or her chef, Matt Molina, as they top the smoking pies with sausage and wild fennel, or squash blossoms and burrata, or fried eggs and puréed anchovies. Every pizza at Mozza is a unique marriage of flour, salt and smoky, hot-burning almond wood, irregular discs that are as individually lovable as children.

Mario Batali is a part owner of Mozza, and the buzziness and heat may remind you of the menus at Otto, Batali’s pizza parlor in Greenwich Village, although Mozza’s pizza is better than Otto’s. The antipasti, which are mostly vegetables, include crackling, deep-fried squash blossoms stuffed with oozing ricotta cheese. There are rotating daily specials, the only traditional main courses served in the pizzeria, and Tuesday’s crisped duck leg already has a cult of its own. David Rosoff’s all-Italian wine list is short and obscure but loaded with delicious things to drink, and nothing is over $50.

Pizzeria Mozza, like La Brea Bakery, which Silverton started a few months before Campanile opened its doors in 1989, is a statement of intent. What comes across most here is Silverton’s obsession with details — even the humble garbage salad, made with slivered organic lettuce, shreds of artisanal salami and buttery aged provolone, is somehow reborn. 641 N. Highland Ave., L.A., (323) 297-0101.

Bologna the Fat

In Bologna, one tends to eat very well on the prosciutto, Parmesan cheese and mortadella of the region, on creamy emulsions and chickens stuffed with butter, on long-cooked ragus that incorporate the entire barnyard into a few tablespoonsful of sauce. It is not for nothing the city is often called Bologna the Fat. Il Moro, which recently transformed itself from a better-than-average office-building restaurant to a center of Bolognese cuisine, may be the only place in Los Angeles where you can taste the cooking of the region — the tiny, meat-stuffed cappelletti floating in a deep-yellow capon broth, the baked lasagna enriched with a wheelbarrowful of bechamel, the house-made pasta, alive under the teeth, buried under an ultradense sauce fashioned from tomatoes and minced pigeon. Prosciutto and salami are served in the traditional Modenese way, with gnocco, oblong, unsweetened beignets that would be equally appreciated by New Orleanians and by Homer Simpson. Tucked into the corner of the Westside where you might least expect a restaurant, busier at lunch than at dinner, it backs up onto a rather romantic patio, has an attached wine bar with occasional live music — and is usually pretty easy to slip into without a reservation even on a Saturday night. A useful restaurant. 11400 W. Olympic Blvd., W.L.A., (310) 575-3530.

A Clean, Well-Lighted Place

For years, I was almost alone in my lack of affection for Angelini Osteria, a popular, reasonably priced café with respectable versions of Roman trattoria classics like saltimbocca, spaghetti carbonara and pollo alla diavola. I went to the osteria when I was in the mood for a decent scottadito, a plate of carbonara or wood-cooked pizza, like everyone else, but I’d always thought of it as a restaurant without passion. The owners of the best osterie in Italy find purpose in repetition of classic dishes, preparing the same few dishes for decades, maintaining the living fabric of civilization. Gino Angelini is basically a creative chef, a guy who likes to put his stamp on dishes rather than preserving traditions. But as his nearby restaurant La Terza came into its own, it has become obvious that the osteria is a release for the chef, a place where he can serve less elaborately garnished versions of his dishes to people who love them, fuel a happy lunch crowd with pasta al limone and tripe, serve oxtails on Thursday nights. Angelini Osteria is not an especially serious restaurant, and a respectable home cook can probably replicate most of its dishes, but sometimes you are in the mood for artistry, and sometimes you just want to have supper. 7313 Beverly Blvd., L.A., (323) 297-0070.