The Best Pasta Restaurants in Los Angeles | Eater LA

"New York City’s celebrated coastal Italian restaurant has finally landed on the West Coast with a rather fetching dining room tucked along Beverly Hills’ tony Camden Drive, already home to Cipriani and Mr. Chow. Here, the same honey onyx bar welcomes diners, beckoning them either to the patio or the main dining room that feels like a billionaire’s yacht. The food might also befit a billionaire, not so much in price (the place certainly isn’t cheap), but in excellence and quality. Uni toast topped with a thin shaving of lardo or a parade of crudo tends to be the way most people start. Antipasti of grilled octopus with smoked potato or branzino tartare make way for the sizeable scratch-made pasta, which is the real star of the menu. Plump, sweet ruby shrimp are studded into twisted gnochetti laced with rosemary oil while the red wine-braised octopus made famous in Manhattan gets woven into strands of slender fusilli. One wouldn’t even notice the rice bone marrow binding the fusilli and octopus together. Most people order the Dover sole as their entrees, though steak and other seared fish options abound. A visit to Marea isn’t complete without dessert; the coconut-inflected meringue and the house-spun ice creams are the highlights. Book a reservation through SevenRooms. — Matthew Kang, lead editor, Eater Southern California/Southwest" - Matthew Kang