Vivoli Cafe is the best Restaurant in LA

Yeah yeah yeah, I know that a lot of people think the LA Food Scene has improved recently. Lots of celeb chefs are opening places here and there's always a line outside Mario Batali's outrageously expensive pizzeria. Gordon Ramsay (someone I really love) has a new restaurant here, and the list goes on.

So last May, I was looking for a place to celebrate my law school graduation. What I was finding were two extremes - casual inexpensive stuff and expensive overpriced pretentious stuff. Nothing in between, nothing where you could go and for $20 or $30 a person, get a damn good meal. Finally, I found the Holy Grail at the Vivoli Cafe and Trattoria on Sunset Blvd. in West Hollywood. Offering a fairly large Italian menu, I was concerned that they had too many things to be good. But the reviews were good so I figured we should give it a shot. And oh my god. Combining price, value, service, and atmosphere, this has got to be the best restaurant in LA. There are only about 10-15 tables. The owners and most of the waiters are actually Italian. They give you warm foccacia (homemade, I assume) with olive spread (hello, delicious) instead of plain old bread and butter, and what certainly looks like a homemade biscotti with your bill. I don't even like biscotti, but theirs are amazing with whole almonds. They even send you a gift certificate on your birthday.

The menu is dirt cheap. I just came home from lunch (using my free birthday gift certificate). For 9.95 I got chicken with FRESH artichokes and tomatoes in a light white wine lemon sauce, which comes with penne pasta and the best marinara sauce I've ever had. I don't even like marinara sauce, but they make theirs homemade every morning. If they sold it, I'd buy it. The dinner portion of my dish was only $5 more for what I presume is a double portion of chicken breast. Even the steaks and seafood all hover around $20-25 and they make lunch accessible by offering a vast array of salads and sandwiches in addition to lunch-sized portions of pastas, chicken, and other Italian delicacies.

All of this is in a package of a very small restaurant that is dominated by a loud open kitchen - the smells permeate the whole place and you're instantly hungry. The service is excellent and they'll do whatever you want.

Today I treated myself to a tiramisu to go. Yeah it's against my diet, but theirs is homemade and I wanted to try it. Look at this masterpiece of deliciousness:




This place is special. I asked the manager where he was from in Italy and we ended up talking about Italy, the US (I asked why he was here when he could be in ITALY), Tuscan beef and gelato, and everything else. The fact that this restaurant is almost smack dab in the middle of the very yuppy Sunset Strip is amazing. You walk inside and you're not in LA anymore, you're anywhere - anywhere in Italy, that is. If you're in LA give this place a try. You won't regret it (and you won't go broke either, which in LA is really saying something for a really classy meal).

:)