What the stars mean: 4 (World class! Worth a trip from anywhere!), 3 (Most excellent, even exceptional.Also making it a restaurant that works well with a wide swath of generations. Details: On restaurant heavy Ave I, just off busy Catalina Avenue, this lively Italian offers a mix of both old school and new school Italian cooking, making this a restaurant with both spaghetti with meatballs, and beef carpaccio on a rucola salad.Cuisine: Old School Italian in a New School Setting.Merrill Shindler is a Los Angeles-based freelance dining critic. Email Italy We were both speaking English, but aside from rigatoni and fettuccine, neither of us had a clue. She was “building a wall.” I was cheering for a down. But not of red zones for her…and pongs for me.
I headed for my TV room to watch football. My aged relative headed home to play Mahj. In the end, we emerged as the sun set over the ocean, into a cooler day, well-fed, well-nourished, with something for all of us. They go through a lot of parmigiana and mozzarella here was there ever time a time when Italian cooking was cheeseless? I can’t imagine. Pizza does not come topped with pineapple, praise the Lord! Rather, its many cheeses, sundry vegetables and, in one version, the meatballs from the spaghetti. Veal is breaded, chicken breasts are pounded, fish is turned into cioppino (an exercise in surprise, with unexpected morsels in every spoonful). There’s eggplant baked long and slow with parmigiana - so long and slow, it can be hard to tell one from the other. The menu is a large one, but not overwhelmingly so. And the spaghetti with meatballs - polpette - slowed down the aged relative’s dissertation long enough for me to hear cheers from the bars. The mix of steamed mussels and clams in garlic and white wine did much to get me through my Mahj lesson. There are freshly sliced tomatoes and roasted bell peppers on the side - flavors and bite in friendly competition.
In between Mahj hands and complications, the aged relative chewed on some properly crunchy calamari, a classic version of a dish that’s always struck me more about the crunch and crackle, than the squid bits.īy contrast, my burrata was soft and yielding, as indulgent a dish as I can imagine this side of a long-aged brie, with a rubbery mozzarella skin filled with the very essence of cream barely held together by inertia. They’re just sounds - but in this case, the soundtrack of my burrata and bruschetta. And though I haven’t a clue as to how it’s played, I’m happy to listen spellbound by what could easily be an oration in Elvish or Dothraki. “Mahj,” as she calls it, carried her through the travails of COVID, when she was in forced isolation for months on end. The restaurants reflect their neighborhoods: Rancho Palos Verdes is more seriously formal, Redondo Beach skews toward Surf City without actually going there. The spinoff doesn’t have a fountain burbling in front, nor the sort of ducal décor you might expect in the hills of Tuscany. Where the Rancho Palos Verdes predecessor is elegant enough for an anniversary or a special birthday, the Redondo Beach sibling is the sort of casual Redondo Beach eatery you can drop by with the family on a Sunday night, for some pizza and an order of lasagna Bolognese. My dish would be topped with shaved parmigiana hers with a spicy tomato sauce. I could have my carpaccio, while she could gobble her fried calamari. It’s a restaurant that, happily, manages to serve something for all of us.
She points out that she’s on the verge of 90, and will probably outlive me, and my love of raw fish.Īnd then, I noticed that Avenue Italy - an upscale Italian restaurant with an old-fashioned menu - had opened a new branch in Redondo Beach, just down the hill from the original Avenue Italy in Rancho Palos Verdes ( 31243 Palos Verdes Drive W, Rancho Palos Verdes 31). I tell her eating like that won’t help her into old age. She wants her sauce red, or at least heavy with cream. Truffles for her are just a somewhat elevated version of dirt. I was going to take an aged relative on one of our joyously retro visits to Little Italy - most likely Mama D’s where red sauce rules, and pasta is served big and bigger, because this aged relative has little love for any dishes or ingredients that have risen over the past half century or so.