RFK Cuisine · Italian · Los Angeles
Best Italian Restaurants in Los Angeles 2026
Italian · Los Angeles · 6 rooms ranked · Updated June 2026
Compiled by the Restaurants for Kings editorial team · Published June 20, 2026 · Updated June 20, 2026
The agnolotti at Funke are folded by hand behind glass off Santa Monica Boulevard, and they are the single clearest argument for eating Italian in Los Angeles. This is not a city of red-sauce nostalgia anymore. Over the past fifteen years it became one of the most serious Italian dining towns in America, built by chefs who learned to roll pasta in Emilia-Romagna and Rome and brought the technique home: a glass laboratorio in Beverly Hills, a California-Italian warehouse in the Arts District, a Michelin-starred mozzarella bar on Melrose. Ranked here on the cooking, the room, and what the bill buys, with the dish to order at each.
1.Funke
Evan Funke's hand-folded agnolotti in a glass pasta lab; the city's best Italian kitchen, worth booking weeks ahead for a milestone dinner.
Evan Funke opened his three-story flagship at 9388 S Santa Monica Boulevard in 2023, a 1930s Art Deco building rebuilt around a chrome-and-glass pasta laboratorio where the rolling is done in full view. The agnolotti, pinched shut over a taleggio fonduta and dressed with a buttery sugo di arrosto, are the dish that defines the place, on a menu where pastas start around $30 and the full spread runs past $90. Funke made his name refusing shortcuts — no machines, no apologies — and the discipline shows in the tajarin and the tortelli as much as the agnolotti. It is in the MICHELIN Guide and it is the hardest pure-Italian table in the city. Book on Resy two to four weeks out and sit where you can watch the laboratorio.
Reserve on Resy; order the agnolotti and a plate of tajarin.
2.Bestia
Ori Menashe's decade-deep Arts District benchmark; book for a long group dinner of charcuterie, cavatelli and lamb neck.
Ori Menashe and Genevieve Gergis opened Bestia in a Downtown Arts District warehouse at 2121 East 7th Place in 2012, and it has spent more than a decade as the city's most copied Italian restaurant. The cavatelli alla Norcina, ricotta dumplings with house pork sausage and shaved truffle, runs about $52 and is the pasta to anchor an order built around the in-house charcuterie and the slow-roasted lamb neck. The room is loud, industrial and still hard to book, and Gergis's dessert program is part of why people keep coming. It is California-Italian in the truest sense: Emilia-Romagna technique routed through a Los Angeles larder. Reserve on Resy for a larger table and graze the salumi board first.
Book on Resy; cavatelli alla Norcina, the charcuterie board, the lamb neck.
3.Osteria Mozza
Nancy Silverton's Michelin-starred classicist; the city's one starred Italian room, for a dinner that starts at the marble mozzarella bar.
Nancy Silverton's Osteria Mozza has held its corner at 6602 Melrose Avenue since 2007 and carries the Michelin star that no other Italian room in Los Angeles does, retained in the current California guide. The centerpiece is a white Carrara marble mozzarella bar where Silverton composes plates of burrata, ricotta and stracciatella, and the orecchiette with sausage and Swiss chard is the pasta regulars steer you to. Silverton, a James Beard Outstanding Chef, runs the most disciplined classic-Italian kitchen in the city, the family-style menu landing around $100 a head. This is the room for a guest who wants the canonical version rather than the experiment. Book OpenTable well ahead and start at the mozzarella counter.
Reserve on OpenTable; begin at the mozzarella bar, then the orecchiette.
4.Mother Wolf
Evan Funke's Roman room in a 1930s newspaper hall; come for cacio e pepe and the loudest, best-looking Italian dinner in town.
Evan Funke's second Los Angeles restaurant opened in early 2022 in the old Hollywood Citizen-News building on Wilcox Avenue, and it cooks the food of Rome and the Lazio region rather than the north. The Roman trinity is the order: cacio e pepe, carbonara and amatriciana, the rigatoni and tonnarelli pulled tight with pecorino and guanciale, pastas in the low-to-mid thirties. The room is a soaring, theatrical hall that drew a four-figure waitlist when it opened and still books out the prime nights. Where Funke's Beverly Hills flagship is a pasta temple, Mother Wolf is a party with serious cooking underneath. Reserve on Resy and lead with the cacio e pepe.
Book on Resy; cacio e pepe, then the carbonara.
5.Rossoblu
Steve Samson's love letter to Bologna; come downtown for daily-cut tagliatelle in his grandmother's ragù.
Steve Samson built Rossoblu at 1124 San Julian Street in the Fashion District around the cooking of Bologna, where his family is from, and it earned its place in the MICHELIN Guide for the conviction of the project. The tagliatelle is hand-cut every day and tossed in Nonna Olimpia's long-simmered Bolognese ragù — the dish to order, with pastas landing in the high twenties — backed by an in-house butchery and salumi program. The big, warm dining room is built for the Emilia-Romagna staples done patiently: tortellini in brodo, the gramigna with sausage, the Sunday-lunch energy on a weeknight. It is the most regionally specific Italian table downtown. Reserve on OpenTable and start with the tagliatelle.
Book on OpenTable; tagliatelle al ragù and the tortellini in brodo.
6.Angelini Osteria
Gino Angelini's twenty-year Beverly Boulevard mainstay; book for the green lasagna that has outlasted every trend in town.
Gino Angelini has cooked the food of his native Emilia-Romagna at 7313 Beverly Boulevard for more than twenty years, long enough to have become the old-guard standard against which the newer rooms are measured. The lasagna verde — spinach pasta layered with beef-and-veal ragù and béchamel, around $30 — is the signature, alongside the whole branzino and the oxtail, and the room stays a low-key neighborhood osteria rather than a scene. It is listed in the MICHELIN Guide and remains one of the easier good Italian tables to get midweek. For a quiet, expertly cooked dinner without the reservation war, this is the city's most reliable Italian room. Book on Resy and order the lasagna verde.
Reserve on Resy; lasagna verde and the branzino.
How Los Angeles eats Italian
The city's Italian map splits by region, not by red sauce. The strongest kitchens have each picked a corner of Italy and committed to it: Emilia-Romagna at Funke, Rossoblu and Angelini Osteria; Rome at Mother Wolf; a California-Italian hybrid at Bestia; and the broad classicist canon at Osteria Mozza. Pasta is where the cooking lives, so order more of it and fewer secondi than you would in a steakhouse town.
Geography matters more here than in most cities, because Los Angeles traffic turns a cross-town dinner into an event. The downtown cluster — Bestia, Rossoblu — is its own night; the Beverly Boulevard and Melrose rooms — Angelini Osteria, Osteria Mozza — pair with a Hancock Park or Hollywood evening; Funke anchors the Westside. Book by the side of town you are already on. For the full picture beyond Italian, the Los Angeles dining guide maps the rest of the city by neighborhood and occasion.
Where not to look for it
Skip these for serious Italian
The Hollywood red-sauce tourist rooms. The famous old names along the boulevards trade on history and celebrity photos more than the kitchen. For Emilia-Romagna cooking at this level, the six rooms above are a different category, and worth the drive.
Jon & Vinny's at peak. The Fairfax favorite is a genuinely good Italian-American room, but it runs as a loud, fast, family-packed all-day spot rather than a destination dinner. Treat it as a casual lunch, not the table for a milestone or a client.
Frequently asked
What is the best Italian restaurant in Los Angeles?
Funke, Evan Funke's Beverly Hills flagship, is the city's high-water mark for handmade pasta, built around a glass laboratorio where the agnolotti are folded by hand. For a decade-long benchmark in California-Italian cooking, Bestia in the Arts District is its only real rival, and Nancy Silverton's Michelin-starred Osteria Mozza is the classicist's pick. Choose by neighborhood and by whether you want a pasta temple or a mozzarella bar.
Which Los Angeles Italian restaurant has a Michelin star?
Osteria Mozza on Melrose Avenue holds the Michelin star among the city's Italian rooms, retained in the most recent California guide for Nancy Silverton's mozzarella bar and pasta program. Funke, Rossoblu and Angelini Osteria are listed in the Michelin Guide without a star. If a starred Italian dinner is the goal, book Mozza weeks ahead and start at the marble mozzarella counter.
Where is the best handmade pasta in Los Angeles?
Evan Funke built his reputation on hand-rolled pasta, and his Beverly Hills flagship Funke is the city's clearest answer, with the agnolotti and tajarin made in a glass-fronted pasta laboratorio. Mother Wolf, his Roman room in Hollywood, runs the same discipline through cacio e pepe and carbonara. Rossoblu's tagliatelle, hand-cut daily for Nonna Olimpia's ragù, is the Bologna alternative downtown.
How far ahead should I book Italian restaurants in Los Angeles?
Book the top tables two to four weeks out. Funke, Bestia and Mother Wolf release reservations on Resy and OpenTable and fill the prime weekend windows almost immediately, with Mother Wolf the hardest of the three. Osteria Mozza takes bookings well ahead for weekends. Angelini Osteria and Rossoblu are easier midweek, and all of them hold back a few bar or walk-in seats for the patient.
What should I order at an Italian restaurant in Los Angeles?
Lead with the pasta. Order the agnolotti at Funke, the cavatelli alla Norcina with sausage and truffle at Bestia, the orecchiette with sausage and Swiss chard at Osteria Mozza, and the cacio e pepe at Mother Wolf. Rossoblu's tagliatelle al ragù and Angelini Osteria's lasagna verde are the Emilia-Romagna benchmarks. Across all six, the hand-rolled pasta is where the kitchens spend their best work.
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