Perfetto

Gas to get the car to Highland and Melrose: $4

Mani/Pedi for Birthday treat: $39 with tip

Sharing a 3+ hour excellent meal with my best friend: PRICELESS!

Not to sound like I'm 16 and stupid, but OH MY GOD!


Osteria Mozza is a colaboration between chef Mario Batali, his business partner Joe Bastianich and Nancy Silverton (La Brea Bread fame). It openeed last summer, is not an easy table to get, and is tremendously trendy.

I was super excited to be going, so I started to read reviews online. BIG mistake. By the end of yesterday afternoon I was fairly sure it was going to be an utter disater, and am happy to report that it wasn't! Despite the warnings of horribly rude service, valets totalling guests cars and inedible unfamiliar food, we sallied forth.


Reservations for 7:45pm - early for us to eat dinner, but given the commute, a far better option than than going home, getting settled in for the evening and then going back out for dinner late - especially on a "school night"). You can try to get a table without a ressie, but we saw people waiting for more than an hour...


Traffic worked with us, and we got there at 7:40. Valet line was short (just 2 cars in front of us), wait for a table also expedient (maybe a 5 minute wait), and service was excellent all around (from the host to the "bread guy").


We had already decided to do their Pasta Tasting Menu... 5 courses of pasta + a palate cleanser (more on that later) and dessert for $69 per person - entire table must participate. We contemplated a cheese course from their Mozzerella Bar, but under the advice of our server waitied to see if we had room for it after trying a few of our pastas.


The bread (as expected) was fab (choice of white, wheat or multi-grain). Nancy Silverton was circulating through the restaurant talking to people, and we sipped decent non-flavored iced tea while waiting (you can also do a wine-pairing for each course for and additional $50 per person, but I was afraid that if I had that much wine I wouldn't even taste let alone enjoy the food).

Before the first course arrived, the host brought out a couple of ricotta crostini with fresh shredded basil, olives and olive oil - compliments of the kitchen. I don't know if roomie told them it was my birthday or my appreciation of the host's tie did it, but we didn't see this treat extended to anyone else that sat down after us. I've never tasted cheese that fresh - we gotta find out who their suppliers are!

First course... I remember thinking "Maybe we can stop at Pink's on the way home..." There were literally 4 bites of pasta on the plate... but they were AMAZING (seems to be the word for the evening all around)... farfalle with green garlic, fava beans & a crunchy hazelnut topping in a chicken broth (?) + butter sauce.

The remainig pasta were equally inspired (let's hope I remember the details):

• 2: long thin pasta with mussells (5) in a saffron & mint sauce
• 3: tortolini (6) with Italian butter and parmesan cheese
• 4: "Raymundo's Pyramids" (3) - beef and spice filled tender triangle-shaped pillows of pasta in a tomato/red pepper (?) sauce
• 5: another long pasta with wild boar ragu
  

In addition, each course had a different cheese freshly grated over it (I think they have 1 guy whose sole responsibility is to grate cheese over each dish), and they were spectacular on their own!

Well, we decided since we were there, we HAD to try one of the cheeses. Taking the suggestion of our server we opted for Burricotti with braised artichokes, pine nuts, currants & mint pesto. Sublime.


As for the service complaints I had read of... I think those people were somewhere else. Granted, you're not going to be seated, hoover down some food and get out of there in 4o minutes. They take the time to let you enjoy each course, drink wine or converse in between bites and the servers actually communicate with the kitchen... when we added our cheese course, our server (still kicking myself for not getting his name), let the kitchen know that we had ordered from the mozzarella bar, and they didn't prepare our "palate cleanser" and dessert UNTIL WE WERE READY! If you go, know that they ask you to order everything you're going to have for exactly this reason, so the kitchen can pace your meal and you're not trying to juggle everything on the table, and your cold items aren't warming up, and your hot items aren't congealing on the plate... eww.


Back to it (still with me?)... next up was a Limoncello sorbetto (which was the one disappointment in the meal, it was tasteless... almost like the used vanilla ice cream instead) in a blood orange sauce. Maybe the blood orange flavor was just too strong for the sorbetto?


At some point during the evening, our server was made aware it was my birthday (and that we were truly enjoying our meal), so when they brought out the dessert from the tasting menu (a trio of 2-bite gelato filled cannoli: espresso - very strong - with chocolate chunks; greek yogurt with pine nuts and honey; and pistachio with morello cherries), there was a bowl of chocolate & hazelnut gelato (tasted like frozen nutella - yum), with a birthday candle ablaze in it (and a homemade pizzelle). No one sang, thank god, but I got to make a wish...


The non-food portion of the evening was interesting as well.. before we even had a chance to read the menus, we were scoping out other tables to see what was on offer. Don't think he was on the menu, but Vince Vaughn walked behind us as he headed for the VIP room in the back... someone whispered "Britney", but I didn't see her... I'm fairly sure Shia LaBeouf was at the Mozzeralla bar, and Debra Messing walked past us with a gaggle of girlfriends... not too shabby for a Thursday night.


A couple sat down next to us midway through our meal. We're not sure who he was, but apparently he's someone... and they know the chef. Within seconds they were being pored champagne, and had instructed the server to let said chef know they were there and to "surprise them". Wow - the food that came out and the attention paid to them was incredible... they also chatted with us a little, and when the chef (Matt Molina) came out to say hello to them, they let him know it was my birthday and I got to thank him personally for our meal!


Oh, and the valet is only $8.50 (pretty standard for L.A.), and the car came back intact.