The 20 Best L.A. Italian Restaurants – Part 8 of 10
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Black Sheep
Brentwood, it has been noted, is as thick with neo-Tuscan restaurants as the Casbah is with spice merchants, streets built on arugula salad and paved with tagliata, awash with herbed roast chickens, pizza margherita and bean soup. Sor Tino, Osteria Latini, Pizzicotto, Toscana, Palmeri, Divino, La Scala Presto — they may not, as has been rumored, all feed into a secret communal kitchen, but I would defy most people to tell the cooking apart blindfolded. Pecorino, at the eastern end of the strip, shares more than a few characteristics with these pleasant, nondescript dining rooms. You will not be deprived of your burrata, your giant steak or your tiramisu. But the cuisine is at least nominally that of the Abruzzo, southeast of Rome, and the bean soup is made with pureed chickpeas — delicious. There is an abundance of cherry tomatoes in everything from the marjoram-scented sauce on the eggplant-stuffed tortelloni to the salt cod with rosemary, and both artichokes and the namesake sheep cheese are ubiquitous — in the stewed tripe, over the carpaccio and in the egg-enriched casserole of lamb.
11604 San Vicente Blvd., Brentwood, (310) 571-3800.
Crust Never Sleeps
Can there be a substance on the planet more delicious than a pizza pie from Casa Bianca (White House) straight out of the oven, a crisp, pliable crust speckled with burnt bits of cornmeal, slightly acid tomato sauce, a gooey mantle of cheese, optimally with nubs of house-made sausage and a handful of deep-fried eggplant sticks scattered over the surface? Does anything go better with a glass of sour red wine or a bottle of Moretti beer? Is it worth waiting an hour in line for a crack at the wedge-of-iceberg-lettuce salad encrusted with chopped olives and tomatoes, the salad whose DNA is borrowed by every steak house in town? Casa Bianca, run since the early 1950s by former oil painter Sam Martorana (who obviously transferred his artistry to the crust) and his wife, Jennie, is the premier checked-tablecloth restaurant in Los Angeles, a monument founded on dough. The pasta is authentically of the 1950s and the mushrooms on the pizza are canned, if that sort of thing bothers you, but no matter: Casa Bianca is a city treasure. When Barack Obama attended nearby Occidental College, people say, his favorite Casa Bianca pie was the one with pineapple and ham.
1650 Colorado Blvd., Eagle Rock, (323) 256-9617.
Not the Olive Garden
The Slow Food guys would be horrified. I'm sort of surprised myself. But I am begrudgingly fond of the C&O Trattoria by the Venice Pier, a vast, beachy warren of tented patios teeming with families, beach dwellers, college kids and everybody else trying to squeeze the maximum amount of fun from a minimum amount of money. The house Chianti, which you draw yourself from coolers set around the perimeter of each dining room, is served on the honor system, and is drinkable. Most of your calories will be consumed in the form of so-called "killer garlic rolls," which arrive hot at your table at approximately 30-second intervals. Appetizers and pastas are big enough to share; if you chip in a couple bucks extra for the "gargantuan" portion, they're big enough to share with a lot of people. And although sauces tend to be on the creamy side, the quality of the cooking is higher than you would imagine it would be at a place that is obviously more about mass feeding than fine dining — linguine with lobster that doesn't taste like something out of a drum; Sicilian chicken salad that is at least as much chicken as salad; and vast platters of over fried calamari that disappear as quickly as pistachio nuts.
31 Washington Blvd., Marina del Rey, (310) 823-9491.
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At C&O Trattoria, dinner is always more fun with a crowd. |
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| Source: Originally published by L. A. Weekly – ©2007 L. A. Weekly |
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