Chi Spacca (and Cake!)

So far, spring has been positively chockfull of celebrations: earlier this month, we toasted to our anniversary at Trois Mec; at the end of March, we jetted to Florida for Justin’s bubbe’s birthday; and, a few weeks before that, we feasted in honor of Justin’s birthday at Chi Spacca.

“Feast” really is the most apt verb for what one does at this joint. Chi Spacca is a meat-centric spot known for its gargantuan portions that forms part of the Mozza complex on Melrose and Highland. As such, it’s overseen by Nancy Silverton, Joe Bastianich and Mario Batali, but its identity has been forged by its chef Chad Colby, who made a name for himself with his salumi and whole hog dinners at Scuola di Pizza. Chi Spacca has long called to meat-lovin’ Justin (and me), and surprise reservations seemed the perfect gift.

The open kitchen grants diners a view of their meal as it comes off the massive grill or out of the wood-burning oven.

We began with the affettati misti ($24.00), a lengthy platter of house-cured prosciutto, salami, pate and terrine. Among my favorite bites were the pancetta-wrapped breadsticks and salami. The more adventurous birthday boy adored the butcher’s terrine or trotter with tarragon and parsley and the crisp, aioli-topped breaded and fried pig’s feet.

Next up was the focaccia di recco ($18.00), a crisp and perfectly blistered flatbread made with stracchino, a funky, fermented cow’s milk cheese. Despite knowing how much food was still to arrive, Justin and I couldn’t stop eating this pizza-sized focaccia.

To balance out the heavier dishes, a platter of snappy roasted cauliflower seasoned with lemon bagna cuda or a garlicky Italian dipping sauce ($10.00).

The kitchen also sent out two more vegetable dishes to brighten things up before the main event.

Our bowl of pickles ($5.00) yielded not only the traditional variety but also bright, tangy pickled cauliflower, cabbage and carrots. Crunch, crunch.

To wrap up act one of the meal, a towering butter lettuce salad ($12.00) with herbs and lemon vinaigrette. This medley of greens would prove an excellent counterpoint to our hearty entree.

We feared that the 42 oz. tomahawk pork chop was a tad ambitious for our table of two, but our porcini-rubbed shortribs ($32.00) were impressively massive in their own right. Thick and impossibly juicy with a gorgeous char, these ribs deserved to have every scrap of meat picked from the bones (and so we did).

Who needs forks and knives?

While the food at Chi Spacca was impressive, what catapulted our dinner to the top of our “best of” list was the impeccable service. From the front of the house to our server, everyone we encountered was incredibly knowledgable about the food and wine and also genuinely helpful, warm and friendly. Our server even rightly encouraged us to scale back our order so that we could better savor the dishes, which we appreciated. Bone marrow pie, I’m coming back for you! Justin and I have experienced some pretty dazzling service in LA, but our evening at Chi Spacca was the tops.

Birthday calls for cake and, this year, I surprised Justin with an adorable funfetti cake from the wonderfully talented baker Heather at SweetSalt.

Happy birthday (again), Justin! May the next year bring many more delicious adventure for us.

Chi Spacca
www.chispacca.com
6610 Melrose Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90036
(323) 297-1133

SweetSalt 
www.sweetsaltfood.com
Heather’s Instagram: @scootabaker
10218 Riverside Drive
Toluca Lake, CA 91602
(818) 509-7790

Mid-Week Insta-Nom: Spumoni Ice Cream Cake at Parm (NYC)

Here’s your mid-week Insta-Nom to help get you over the hump:

Even with snow falling outside and a thick, fuzzy scarf still wrapped around my neck for warmth, I couldn’t resist the call of Parm’s spumoni ice cream cake. At the casual Italian-American sister to Torrisi, pastry chef Megan Fitzroy has created a dessert celebrating both Italian flavors and American tastes. With chocolate cookie crumbles as the base, the sky-high slice features layers of pistachio, strawberry and chocolate gelato and is topped with a whipped frosting, rainbow sprinkles and a maraschino cherry. Freezing my buns off was never so deliciously worth it. 

Parm

www.parmnyc.com

248 Mulberry St. (between Prince and Spring)

New York, NY 10012

(212) 993-7189

Closing Night at Angeli Caffe

On January 13th, after 27 years of service, Angeli Caffe hosted its final dinner. The Melrose Avenue fixture, owned and operated by Chef Evan Kleiman, was a trusty, go-to option for delicious, seasonal Italian cooking for many, including myself. In fact, my love for food owes a great debt to Chef Kleiman and Angeli.

When I first moved to LA to attend college, food was not a particularly important part of my life. Its relative unimportance to me was rooted in several different factors, not the least of which were my struggles with an eating disorder in high school. In my sophomore year, however, I sampled Chef Kleiman’s food and learned of the Slow Food movement, seasonal cooking and locally-sourced ingredients. My exposure to these concepts radically changed the way I looked at food and fostered my appreciation for it. Since then, I have turned to Angeli Caffe for all manner of events: (real) first dates, birthdays, dinners with parents and out-of-towners, and graduation dinners (for both J and me). When J and I heard that Angeli Caffe was shuttering, we knew, without a doubt, that we’d have to pay a visit to the restaurant for its closing night.

Although it was the restaurant’s final night, the mood amongst the diners was convivial; we were celebrating the restaurant’s run, not mourning its closure. Everyone around us seemed to have their own Angeli story, their own connection to the restaurant that made it feel uniquely “theirs.” A well-known actor sitting nearby told me that he’s eaten there since childhood, even rolling pizza dough in the kitchen as a small boy. People from all of the restaurant’s nearly three decades had gathered for one last bite of Angeli.

Suppli (rice croquettes stuffed with mozzarella) and Croquette di Patate (potato croquettes with salame and smoked mozzarella)

Pizza con Salcicce (caramelized onion, Italian sausage, fontina and sage)

Special pizza with sausage, artichoke, sweet pepper and fontina

Seasonal lasagna

Tiramisu

My love of, appreciation for and steps towards developing a healthy relationship with food can all be traced back to Angeli. Thank you to Evan Kleiman for the love you poured into the food at Angeli Caffe over 27 years–particularly the 5 which I enjoyed!—and for the passion for good food that you awakened in me. I already miss that hot, pillowy bread but can’t wait to see (and, more importantly, eat) what comes next. Cheers!

Previous posts about Angeli Caffe:
Dinner (one of my first posts on Noms, Not Bombs)
Passover Seder

The High’s and Low’s of Pizzeria Mozza

Pizzeria Mozza has eluded me and J for quite some time now.

While others fondly recalled their fennel sausage pizza or their butterscotch budino with a hint of drool on their face, J and I could only talk about the 4:30 PM or 10:30 PM reservations we’d turned down. For J’s birthday, however, I was determined to change our Mozza-less-ness and booked surprise reservations a month in advance.

What’s left to say about Mozza that hasn’t been said already? Founded by superchefs Nancy Silverton, Mario Batali and Joseph Bastianich in 2007 and helmed by Matt Molina (announced today as one of the final nominees for the 2010 James Beard Awards), Pizzeria Mozza is still one of the hottest reservations in town and is often heralded as the best pizza in LA.

Would the food live up to the hype? J and I were about to see.

We started with the Mozza caprese ($12). I’ve eaten my fair share of caprese in both the US and Italy, but this dish was absolutely mindblowing. Each tasty tomato literally exploded with juice when I cut into it, and the pesto and mozzarella cheese were delicious to the tenth power. There was a thin, crunchy layer of something on the cheese that I couldn’t identify but, whatever it was, it worked and was gooood. I seriously need to look into whether or not crack is an ingredient in this dish because I am jonesing for my next Mozza caprese fix.

I ordered the famed Squash blossom, tomato and burrata pizza ($22), which lived up to every rave review I have ever heard. I’ve never eaten squash blossoms (which are, apparently, so delicate and perishable that grocery stores don’t bother to carry them), but I’m now a fan. The giant mounds of burrata can only be described with one word– “NOM.” And the crust! Flavorful! Crunchy! *Swoon* $22 is a lot to pay for pizza, but this is worth every cent.

The birthday boy ordered the Prosciutto di parma, rucola, tomato and mozzarella pizza ($15). Wow, were the prosciutto and the rucola fresh and tasty. This one had a little too much going on flavor-wise for my taste, but J happily gobbled it up.

As wonderful as the food was, however, it was overshadowed by very poor service. Our waitress paid us no attention while being completely attentive of all of her other tables and didn’t even mention J’s birthday, let alone celebrate it with, say, a complimentary glass of wine or dessert. I noted the special occasion both when I made the reservation online and when I called to change the reservation time but was willing to chalk the omission up to the information getting lost in translation…until I saw our check, which had “BDAY” clearly written on it. After going out of our way to go to Pizzeria Mozza to celebrate a special event, J and I left feeling neglected and disappointed despite the delicious dinner.

I’ve since emailed the manager of Pizzeria Mozza and received a very nice, completely apologetic response, asking for my phone number to call me tomorrow, which I greatly. appreciate. We’ll see what happens! The food was so good that I’d hate for this bad experience to turn me and J off from Mozza for forever.

I’ll post an update after I speak with the manager.

Pizzeria Mozza

www.mozza-la.com

641 N. Highland Ave.

Los Angeles, CA 90036

(323) 297-0101

Angeli Caffe

It was love at first bite for me and Angeli Caffe (a bite of pumpkin lasagna to be precise) and it’s been my go-to Italian restaurant ever since. Located on Melrose, Angeli Caffe serves rustic Italian food with seasonal, fresh ingredients. The food is simple but incredibly delicious, which is no surprise when you consider its owner.

Evan Kleiman is a chef, cookbook writer and host of KCRW’s Good Food. She’s also the founder of Slow Food LA, a non-profit organization that promotes good, clean and fair food production and consumption. Basically, she’s a total superstar in the foodie world…and one of my heroes.

As part of its connection to the Slow Food Movement, Angeli has a year-round menu and a seasonal menu. When I visited this weekend, I was stoked to get to try the winter menu!

J ordered the Lasagna Angeli, lasagna with a tomato-basil sauce, ricotta, parmesan and seasonal veggies including spinach. Although I prefer heartier, meatier lasagna, this is so good! You can actually taste chunks of tomato in the sauce, which makes it feel like you’re eating a home-cooked meal rather than a restaurant-prepared one. I also love that the lasagna’s flavor will always be different depending on the season during which you visit the restaurant.

My out-of-town visitor ordered the seasonal gnocchi, which was beet. I passed on trying this one, but my friend ate every bite! Not a bad sign. I just love that they’re pink!

My other friend (and Angeli-newbie) opted for the Special Pizza with winter squash, fontina cheese and walnuts. Squash is not something that I’d ordinarily think of as a pizza topping, but the soft, sweet squash played nicely off the crunchy dough. I had food envy over this one!

I ordered the Penne with Ricotta, Garlic and a “hint of chile.” The dish was good but very rich. I didn’t quite anticipate that the pasta would be bathed in ricotta, and I got full very quickly. It needed a little more chile to counteract all of the creamy cheese.

Our first dessert was Chocolate Chunk Bread Pudding. The consensus was that it was yummy with just the right amount of chocolate but that it could have been a little gooier (although this is a matter of taste).

We also ordered a mixed berry tart. I loved the fruit, but the tart itself was a little dry and definitely needed to be paired with ice cream rather than whipped cream.

Angeli Caffe is a must-try for homemade, rustic Italian!

Angeli Caffe

www.angelicaffe.com

7274 Melrose Avenue

Los Angeles, CA 90046

(323) 936-9086