Best Italian Restaurants in Los Angeles 2026: The Ranked Guide
Our ranked guide to the eleven Italian restaurants we book in Los Angeles for 2026, from Evan Funke's Roman cooking at Mother Wolf to Nancy Silverton's one-MICHELIN-star Osteria Mozza, with the booking condition for each room.
Why we wrote this guide
Italian is the largest cuisine group on our Los Angeles roster, and the eleven rooms in this guide sit a long way apart: a Roman kitchen in Hollywood, a warehouse at the edge of downtown, a produce-driven room on Abbot Kinney, two Nancy Silverton restaurants a few numbers apart on Melrose, a Sicilian pasta room on Canon Drive, and a pasta laboratorio behind glass in Beverly Hills. Six of the eleven are in the MICHELIN Guide California, and one of them, Osteria Mozza, holds one MICHELIN star in the 2026 selection, one of nineteen one-star restaurants in the Guide's Los Angeles area.
That recognition is the spine of the list, but it is not the thing that decides your night. Several of these kitchens state that they make their own pasta, and at Funke that work happens behind glass in the middle of the room. What separates them is the room and the booking. Funke releases its tables seven days ahead at 9am Pacific for groups of eight or fewer. Antico Nuovo opens reservations for one to six guests thirty days out and puts parties of seven to twelve on a pre-set family-style menu at a farmhouse table. Osteria Mozza takes tables for up to seven, offers a family-style menu at eight, and sells its Pasta Tasting as a separate reservation at the Amaro Bar. Those rules decide more about the evening than the menu does.
The other thing visitors get wrong is the Melrose pair. Osteria Mozza at 6602 and Chi Spacca at 6610 are both Nancy Silverton's, on the same stretch of the same street, and they are two different restaurants with two different reservations, two different kitchens and two different standings in the Guide. Outside Las Vegas the restaurant reservation sits with the venue, not with us. What we do is point you to the right room and tell you when its booking window opens. Last updated October 2026.
The ranked guide
1. Novikov (Beverly Hills)
Novikov opened on North Canon Drive in June 2024, bringing the Italian-Mediterranean cooking of Novikov London, first opened in Mayfair in 2011, to the West Coast. The kitchen is rooted in refined Italian cuisine, built on handmade pasta, premium seafood and classic dishes, with Mediterranean influences adding bright, seasonal flavor. Sleek interiors and bold design carry the energy from the open kitchens through to the bar, and the room moves from a long lunch into a late night without changing gear: doors stay open until 11pm Sunday through Wednesday and until 2am Thursday through Saturday, with lunch running daily from 11am to 4pm and a three-course set lunch alongside it. A coffee shop opens at 9am.
The menu is built for the middle of the table. Bluefin tuna tartare and the Classic Novikov Burrata open it, tagliatelle wagyu bolognese and a cacio e pepe finished tableside in a wheel of cheese carry the pasta, and the grill runs to a Snake River Farms 45-day dry-aged rib-eye and a 45-ounce bistecca tomahawk to share. The Novikov Spritz mixes prosecco, Campari, amaretto, Chambord and rhubarb. The events calendar brings live piano, jazz nights and DJ nights, the Private Dining Room seats up to 18 and can be closed off or left open to the main room, and the Courtside Patio can be made private for up to 45. Dress is smart and elegant, with no sportswear, beachwear, hoodies, shorts or hats.
See Novikov.
Best for: a Beverly Hills Italian dinner that carries on past midnight at the end of the week.
2. Mother Wolf (Hollywood)
Mother Wolf is chef Evan Funke's homage to Rome and la cucina romana, opened in 2022 on the first floor of the historic Citizen News building at 1545 Wilcox Avenue in Hollywood. Martin Brudnizki and Bernadette Blanc designed the room around an open floor plan, Murano lighting, Venetian-inspired terrazzo floors and a Milanese color palette. The cooking follows Roman tradition, built on produce from Funke's network of California family farms.
Pasta is the core: rigatoni all'amatriciana with guanciale, tomato and pecorino, tonnarelli cacio e pepe, mezzi rigatoni alla carbonara, and rigatoncini alla vaccinara with oxtail ragu. The pizza romana runs from a margherita with mozzarella di bufala and basil to la mortazza with mortadella, ricotta and Bronte pistachio. Start with fiori di zucca, squash blossoms with ricotta, or polpette di coda, oxtail meatballs in tomato sugo, then take branzino alla brace, a grilled whole sea bass with spinach, pine nuts and sultanas, and finish with tiramisu or budino di gianduja. Dinner runs Monday through Thursday from 5:30pm to 9:30pm, Friday from 5:30pm to 11pm, Saturday from 5pm to 11pm and Sunday from 5pm to 9:30pm. Just beyond the doors, Bar Avoja, Funke's cocktail and aperitivo bar, opens Thursday through Saturday from 6pm.
See Mother Wolf.
Best for: a Roman pasta dinner in Hollywood with a drink next door afterwards.
3. Bestia (Arts District)
Bestia opened in 2012, when Ori Menashe and Genevieve Gergis took over a vacant warehouse down a dimly lit alley on East 7th Place, at the edge of downtown Los Angeles. More than a decade later the dining room still feels charged, and it is listed in the MICHELIN Guide. The room keeps its industrial bones: exposed brick, steel beams, well-worked concrete and an open kitchen built around wood-fired cooking. Most nights the chatter fills the space, while out back a leafy courtyard framed by fig trees lets the music drop to a hum.
Menashe's menu is his own take on Italian classics, with powerful but balanced flavors. Start with the salumi of Italian and Spanish-style cured meats with house pickles and mustard, a Peruvian scallop crudo, or roasted bone marrow with spinach gnocchetti and aged balsamic. Pasta is the heart of the meal: squid ink spaghetti with lobster, serrano and Meyer lemon, and cavatelli alla Norcina with ricotta dumplings, pork sausage and shaved truffles. Pizzas run from a classic margherita to fig and gorgonzola. Gergis, a self-taught pastry chef who also shaped the look of the restaurant, runs dessert, where a bittersweet chocolate budino tart with salted caramel shares the menu with ricotta fritters and a black mission fig crostata. Dinner runs nightly from 5 to 11pm, the restaurant closes for most major holidays, and the bar takes a pizza and a beer if the book is full.
See Bestia.
Best for: a long group dinner in the Arts District, or a seat at the bar without one.
4. Gjelina (Venice)
Gjelina opened on Venice's Abbot Kinney Boulevard in 2008. Founder Fran Camaj named it after his mother, and the kitchen has held to the same idea ever since: locally sourced, produce-forward food, with menus guided by long-standing relationships with Southern California farmers, local ranchers, fishermen and co-ops. It is a MICHELIN Guide restaurant, and the day starts early. Breakfast is served weekdays from 9am and lunch from 11:30am, brunch covers weekend mornings from 9am to 2:30pm, an afternoon menu fills the gap from 2:30pm to 4:30pm, and dinner runs every night from 5pm to 10:30pm.
Vegetables get as much space on the menu as anything else, from grilled baby artichokes with bagna cauda to Japanese sweet potato with jalapeno yogurt. On the pizza list the lamb sausage pie with rapini, pecorino and asiago is the one to steer toward, though the pomodoro is a reliable anchor if you want to taste the dough on its own. For pasta, the saffron spaghetti with bottarga, confit tomato and Calabrian chile is rich, oceanic and a little spicy, while the orecchiette with wagyu beef cheek bolognese and whipped ricotta is the heavier detour. Next door at 1427 Abbot Kinney, Gjelina Take Away is the counter-service outpost, open daily from 7am for breakfast and from 11:30am to 9pm for lunch and dinner.
See Gjelina.
Best for: a Venice table at an awkward hour, and the vegetable cooking as much as the pasta.
5. The Nice Guy (North La Cienega)
The Nice Guy sits at 401 North La Cienega Boulevard, and its look pays homage to a decadent era of Mafia bars and restaurants, the kind of room where the owners and their friends settle in for the evening. The doors open at 6pm every night and the room stays open until 2am. A vintage marble and brass bar greets guests on the way in, sized and shaped to get conversation going, while the booths along the exterior wall keep things intimate and the larger booths flanking the room carry the party atmosphere through the night.
The cooking is Italian-American and it knows exactly what it is. The spicy rigatoni vodka is the dish most people come back for, a properly made vodka sauce with chili flake and real heat. The Black Truffle Bianca pizza is the splurge, with sottocenere, fontina and fresh black truffle, and the bucatini lobster fra diavolo brings grilled lobster in a Calabrian chili tomato sauce. Molinari's Meatballs with stracciatella settle you in before the pasta, and the cacio e pepe is clean and correctly executed. The larger plates cover the standards, from chicken parm and Lew's chicken piccata to eggplant parm, alongside a 16-ounce dry-aged ribeye and lamb chops, and the room expects you to pace yourself across several courses.
See The Nice Guy.
Best for: a late Italian-American dinner that finishes at the bar.
6. Il Pastaio (Beverly Hills)
Il Pastaio, "the Pasta Maker," is the Drago family's pasta room at 400 North Canon Drive in Beverly Hills. Brothers Giacomino, Celestino and Calogero Drago launched it, cooking from what they grew up with in the small Sicilian town of Galati Mamertino: ripe tomatoes, olives, freshly rolled pasta, and the cheeses and wines of the region. The kitchen began with simple, authentic pasta dishes that follow the seasons, and pasta is still the point.
The pumpkin ravioli and the squid ink risotto are the dishes the family names first, along with the spicy arrabbiata sauce that has long been a house favorite. Over the years the menu has grown to take in meats and poultry, fresh fish, gluten-free pastas and a range of desserts, and the kitchen prides itself on accommodating special requests. A recent remodel added The Olive Room, a private dining space for 30 guests built around a wine room holding 1,400 bottles of wine and spirits, which suits a birthday or a business dinner that wants its own four walls. The restaurant also hosts gatherings on its garden patio, on the outside patio along Brighton Way, in the main dining room, or as a full buyout.
See Il Pastaio.
Best for: a Beverly Hills pasta lunch, or a private dinner for thirty with the wine room in view.
7. Osteria Mozza (Hollywood)
Osteria Mozza is Nancy Silverton's Italian restaurant at 6602 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood, and it holds one MICHELIN star in the 2026 California selection. The kitchen is presided over by Silverton, a James Beard Award-winning chef, and built on traditional Italian cooking and seasonality. The centerpiece is the Mozzarella Bar, a counter in white Carrara marble where Silverton can often be found composing dishes around freshly imported mozzarella, ricotta and cream-filled burrata. A separate Amaro Bar serves the a la carte menu, and alongside them sit the Primo Ministro Room, a private wine room lined with bottles from the cellar, and an indoor patio.
From the Mozzarella Bar, Nancy's Favorite Trio brings mozzarella di bufala, Cantabrian anchovies and semi-dried tomato with cruschi peppers and fett'unta at $44. The pasta list runs to tagliolini Da Francescana with Beurre de Baratte and 36-month white cow Parmigiano at $42, the grill to an 8 oz beef tagliata with rucola and aceto balsamico at $58, and dessert to the rosemary olive oil cakes with Monini olive oil gelato and rosemary brittle at $22. The wine list is all-Italian, weighted to Piedmont, Friuli and Tuscany. Dinner is served seven nights, from 5:30pm Monday through Thursday and from 5pm Friday through Sunday, with the kitchen going to 9pm and to 10pm on Friday and Saturday. Book carefully: tables are taken for parties of up to seven, parties of eight are offered a family-style menu, and the Pasta Tasting, $80 per person with an optional $65 wine pairing, is served at the Amaro Bar Monday through Thursday evenings and has to be booked as its own reservation.
See Osteria Mozza.
Best for: a starred Italian dinner, or the Pasta Tasting booked on its own.
8. Antico Nuovo (Larchmont)
Antico Nuovo is Chad Colby's Italian restaurant at 4653 Beverly Boulevard in Larchmont, listed in the MICHELIN Guide's 2026 California selection. It is his first solo restaurant; he cooked before this as head chef at Chi Spacca, further along this list. Its own account is of a kitchen drawing on the Italian countryside, preserving ancient techniques and traditions in food and wine, and MICHELIN's inspector describes a hive of activity with the coolness of an underground speakeasy, backlit booths lining the room, and a hand-cranked rotisserie grill as the centerpiece of the kitchen.
The menu is seasonal and labeled as such, built on hand-made pasta and wood-fired meat and fish. Cannelloni della Sora Maria is served with tomato, bufala and spinach, and Plin dell'Alta Langa comes dressed in sugo di arrosto. The house focaccia can be taken with whipped ricotta and pistachio pesto, the version MICHELIN's inspector named. Agnello Dorato is golden lamb chops with parmigiano, and La Bistecca a dry-aged black angus with marsala jus at market price, with house-churned ice creams to finish, among them honeycomb, pistachio crunch and meyer lemon. Service is dinner nightly, 5:30pm to 10pm, and the drinks list runs to wine, sake and beer. Reservations for one to six guests open 30 days ahead; parties of seven to twelve dine on a pre-set family-style menu at one of the large farmhouse tables in the main dining room, and the restaurant takes a full buyout for up to 54 guests.
See Antico Nuovo.
Best for: a group of seven or more that wants one farmhouse table and one menu.
9. Cecconi's West Hollywood (West Hollywood)
Cecconi's West Hollywood is the Italian restaurant on Melrose Avenue that opened in February 2009 in the old Morton's space, the second Cecconi's anywhere and the first outside London. It cooks modern classic Italian in a room modeled on the original Mayfair restaurant, and it now trades as part of Soho House. Out front is a garden planted with palm trees, laid out for an aperitivo before a table; inside, the design follows an Italian trattoria. The Butterfly Room is a secluded private space that takes a dinner or a drinks reception, and the whole restaurant can be booked for a party.
The menu is built on cicchetti, homemade pasta and wood-fired pizza. The panzerotto is filled with cacio e pepe, mortadella and black truffle, spaghetti comes with Maine lobster and chili, and agnolotti del plin arrives in a truffle sauce. Among the mains are a veal chop Milanese with lemon and sage and a Dover sole in lemon-caper sauce, and the zucchini fritti with lemon aioli is the plant-based plate on the cicchetti list. An Aperitivo Hour menu runs alongside the all-day, brunch and dessert menus. Service runs seven days, opening at 11:30 AM on weekdays and 11 AM at the weekend, with the kitchen going to 11:30 PM on Friday and Saturday and 10 PM the rest of the week. Two practical notes, both the restaurant's own: in its words, "We have a smart casual dress code at Cecconi's," and tables are set at 90 minutes for one or two guests and two hours for three or more. Valet parking is available.
See Cecconi's West Hollywood.
Best for: a Melrose lunch, or an aperitivo in the palm garden before the table.
10. Chi Spacca (Hancock Park)
Chi Spacca is Nancy Silverton's Italian restaurant on the corner of Melrose and Highland in Hancock Park, at 6610 Melrose, listed in the MICHELIN Guide's 2026 California selection. It is her second room on this list and a separate booking from Osteria Mozza, a few numbers along the same street and in a different tier of the Guide. The name is Italian for she (or he) who cleaves, and the kitchen calls its own work an ode to meat, beautiful meat. It opened as a stand-alone restaurant on 3 February 2013, in a room that had been a pizza classroom, where the weekly salumi nights that became the restaurant were held. Alisa Vannah is executive chef.
The dining room is small and lit low, with candlelit tables and walls lined with wine. The wood-burning oven throws a glow across the marble countertops, and the kitchen works as an open exhibition. The dry-cure program came first: the team built what it describes as the first dry-cure program in Los Angeles, and the affettati misti, for two to four guests, is cut from it, with coppa, guanciale, trotter fritti, pancetta and pork tenderloin. Focaccia di Recco arrives with stracchino and extra virgin olive oil, and pollo alla diavola su crostone is spicy roasted chicken on toast; MICHELIN's inspector named both. The costata alla Fiorentina is a 36 oz dry-aged bone-in New York, and the porcini-rubbed short ribs come with scallion and salsa verde. Service is dinner nightly: 6pm to 9:30pm Monday through Thursday, 5:30pm to 10pm Friday and Saturday, and 5:30pm to 9:30pm on Sunday. For a private dinner the room seats up to 20 guests at one long table, or up to 36 across the floor.
See Chi Spacca.
Best for: a meat-led Italian dinner, or twenty guests at one long table.
11. Funke (Beverly Hills)
Funke by Evan Funke fills a restored 1930s Art Deco building on Little Santa Monica Boulevard in Beverly Hills, across two interior levels and a rooftop, and it is listed in the MICHELIN Guide. At its center is a 20-foot-tall pasta laboratorio enclosed in glass and polished chrome, where pasta makers work in full view of the room. The ground-floor dining room rises 24 feet under 273 hand-blown Murano glass pendants that twinkle slightly, like a star-scattered sky. Architect Dan Brunn and designer Clint Nicholas drew on Italian Modernism: curved wood-and-leather banquettes, Crema Del Monte and Verde Imperiale marble, and Loro Piana linen on the walls, with works by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Andy Warhol and Ed Ruscha hanging throughout. The private dining room has its own outside entrance and interior corridor.
The cooking is handmade pasta, exploring the less-traveled regions of Italy and the rare, obscure pasta shapes and the women who have mastered them. Upstairs, Bar Funke is built around a translucent Cristallo Rosa quartz bar that glows pink, with views across Beverly Hills to the mountains and the Hollywood Hills, pouring cocktails al fresco from its own menu, and walk-ins are welcome there. Dinner runs Monday through Saturday from 5pm, until 10:30pm Monday through Thursday and 11pm on Friday and Saturday, and the restaurant bar is held for walk-in guests too. The booking is the hard part: reservations open seven days ahead at 9am Pacific for groups of eight or fewer, so set an alarm for the morning a week before the night you want.
See Funke.
Best for: the pasta room to plan a week around, with a rooftop bar that takes walk-ins if the table does not land.
How to choose, fast
Roman pasta, done straight: Mother Wolf.
The starred table: Osteria Mozza.
Meat, salumi and a long private table: Chi Spacca.
The pasta pilgrimage, if you can win the drop: Funke.
A charged warehouse room for a group: Bestia.
Any hour of the day, vegetables included: Gjelina.
A late, loud Italian-American night: The Nice Guy.
A party of seven to twelve on one menu: Antico Nuovo.
Lunch or aperitivo on Melrose: Cecconi's West Hollywood.
Sicilian pasta in Beverly Hills: Il Pastaio.
A dinner that runs past midnight: Novikov.
Why the Italian reservation is harder than it looks
The booking window is what decides these tables. Funke releases seven days ahead at 9am Pacific and only for groups of eight or fewer. Antico Nuovo opens one-to-six-guest reservations thirty days out, and anything from seven to twelve guests becomes a pre-set family-style booking at a farmhouse table. Osteria Mozza stops at seven guests before the menu changes to family-style, and its Pasta Tasting at the Amaro Bar is a different reservation from a table in the dining room. Cecconi's sets tables at 90 minutes for one or two guests and two hours for three or more, so a leisurely four-course plan belongs somewhere else on this list.
Outside Las Vegas the dinner reservation sits with the restaurant, not with us. Every pick above links to its own page here, and that page carries the restaurant's current booking link, so the useful move is to open the page for the room you want and book it the morning its window opens.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best Italian restaurant in Los Angeles?
Osteria Mozza holds one MICHELIN star in the 2026 California selection, so it is the answer if the distinction is what you are after. For Roman cooking specifically, Mother Wolf in Hollywood is the reference, and for handmade pasta as the whole point of the evening it is Funke in Beverly Hills. The right answer depends on the occasion and on which booking window you can actually catch.
Which Los Angeles Italian restaurants are in the MICHELIN Guide?
Six of the eleven here. Osteria Mozza holds one MICHELIN star in the 2026 California selection. Chi Spacca and Antico Nuovo are listed in the Guide's 2026 California selection without a star. Bestia, Funke and Gjelina are each in the MICHELIN Guide. A listing without a star is a real distinction, and not the same thing as a star.
Are Osteria Mozza and Chi Spacca the same restaurant?
No. They are two Nancy Silverton restaurants on the same stretch of Melrose, Osteria Mozza at 6602 and Chi Spacca at 6610, with separate reservations, separate kitchens and separate standings in the Guide: one MICHELIN star for Osteria Mozza, a listing in the 2026 California selection for Chi Spacca. Osteria Mozza is built around the Mozzarella Bar and an all-Italian wine list; Chi Spacca is built around meat and the in-house dry-cure program. Booking one does not get you into the other.
Where should I go for the best pasta in Los Angeles?
Funke is the pasta specialist, working the rare and obscure shapes from the less-traveled regions of Italy in front of a glass-walled laboratorio. Mother Wolf is the Roman answer, with cacio e pepe, carbonara and amatriciana as written. Il Pastaio has rolled Sicilian-rooted pasta on Canon Drive since the Drago brothers opened it. And Osteria Mozza runs a Pasta Tasting at the Amaro Bar, $80 per person with an optional $65 wine pairing, Monday through Thursday evenings, booked separately from a dining-room table.
How far in advance should I book?
It depends on the restaurant, and two of them publish the rule. Funke opens its book seven days ahead at 9am Pacific for groups of eight or fewer. Antico Nuovo opens reservations for one to six guests 30 days ahead. For the others, the practical answer is to open the venue page and book as soon as the platform shows your date, because prime-time seatings on a weekend go first everywhere on this list.
Is there a dress code?
Two of the eleven publish one. Cecconi's West Hollywood says in its own words, "We have a smart casual dress code at Cecconi's." Novikov asks for smart and elegant dress, with no sportswear, beachwear, hoodies, shorts or hats. We do not list a dress code for a room that has not published one, so if it matters to you, check with the restaurant when you book.
Which of these rooms take a large group?
Antico Nuovo seats parties of seven to twelve on a pre-set family-style menu and takes a buyout for up to 54. Chi Spacca seats up to 20 at one long table or up to 36 across the floor. Il Pastaio's Olive Room holds 30 and the restaurant also takes a full buyout. Cecconi's has the Butterfly Room and can be booked whole. Novikov's Private Dining Room seats up to 18 and its Courtside Patio can be made private for up to 45. Osteria Mozza has the Primo Ministro Room, and Funke's private dining room has its own entrance.
Booking the table
Book direct on the restaurant's own platform. Every pick above links to its own page, which carries the current booking link, the hours and the booking conditions as the restaurant publishes them.
Then tell us the night and the group and we will build the rest of it around dinner.
Build a plan with us
Want the full lineup? Browse every Los Angeles restaurant we feature to build the rest of the trip around dinner.
Build a custom itinerary with our concierge team. Pair the venues mentioned above into a single concierge-confirmed evening. See the full Las Vegas events calendar for every upcoming DJ and pool party across the city.
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