Trying to decide between gjelina, bestia, or chi spacca for dinner. Or open to suggestions for some place I haven’t been along those lines. Really good but relatively casual.
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I’m sure you’ve been to Rossoblu, but that is the restaurant I would say has the most in common with the restaurants you mentioned.
halloween night? gotta go with gjelina pizza and those venice freaks
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either this weekend or next weekend not sure, but yeah just trying to decide whether I want to go to an old faithful or if there is something new out there worth trying
New to me and on my list to try that veer Italian
Funke
Stella
The Benjamin
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All sound good. Antico Nuovo, Leopardo, and Rustic Canyon are sort of in the same realm.
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Thoughts about stella and funke?
The Su Filindeu at Stella is special. Risk of random salt bomb has been an issue on my last visits to Felix.
Adding: If you are a solo diner at Antico Nuovo they’ll let you split pasta plates to half orders.
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I really loved felix back in the day sorry to hear about uneven salting.
Thoughts on antico? Better than bestia, spacca, or gjelina?
Antico’s the best Italian food I’ve had in LA. If you haven’t been there and can get a reservation, go.
Solo diners can also get half-portion ice cream
My ranking of the above restaurants would be: Stella, Felix (and Funke restaurants more generally), Spacca, Antico Nuovo, Rossoblu, Bestia. I’m sure everybody’s ranking would be different though. My guess from hhh’s postings is that he wouldn’t like Stella as much as I do.
Gjelina is sufficiently different that it’s hard to fit into those rankings. For a one-time visit these days, I would put it between Spacca and Antico Nuovo, though I hold Gjelina in much higher regard than those restaurants due to its bigger, constantly changing menu, vegetable-centric focus, lower prices, and more casual vibe.
The best things at antico (the focaccia, ice cream) are as good as it gets in LA. And everything else (pastas, entrees – especially the chicken) is also very good. It’s a nice space, easy to get a res, and the parking situation is good – valet parking, and in the same lot that the restaurant is in.
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I thought the food at Gjelina was pretty similar to Bestia’s but I’ve only been to each once. Both seemed more Cal-Italian than Italian to me.
Consider this: Bestia does not have a single cooked vegetable on the menu. Gjelina has 12. (I didn’t count the fries.)
Major reasons I’m not a Bestia fan:
- They suck when it comes to vegetables.
- If you want a non-red-meat main, your only choice is the fish covered with spices that has been there on the menu since when they opened I think and isn’t that great IMO.
- Relatedly, they suck when it comes to changing the menu.
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Bestia has had cooked vegetables in the past, but Gjelina’s exceptionally good on that score.
Couldnt get a reservation for nuovo or chi spacca (except their patio which is dreadful) going to the gjood olje standbyj gjelina. Hajpened to snagj an earlyj rezj
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Is Chi Spacca’s “patio” on the sidewalk? The dining area in the parking lot behind Mozza was one of the nicer pandemic improvisations I visited.
Yes it’s on the sidewalk. There are some plants on the fence that make it a little nicer. But I agree with hhh that it’s not great.
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Loved it.
But felt for the homeowners whose properties paralleled the service area. Imagine if a quiet side of your property suddenly became one of LA’s premiere dining “rooms.”
So like every urban dwelling in Europe 
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