Nando Trattoria

"Nando Trattoria in Manhattan Beach is the rare LA Italian restaurant that matches the local climate. Perched up on a hill a few hundred yards from the ocean, the salt air blows into this 50-seat dining room as soon as its door opens. Brothers Dario and Alessio Vullo, who hail from Sicily, brought their Michelin Bib Gourmand restaurant from Chicago to ritzy Manhattan Beach in 2021 (they also opened in Champaign, Illinois). The experience feels plucked right out of a busy street in Palermo, with pulsing house music, a CB2-style interior, and thick leather-bound menus. The tremendous cooking here defies the dated design and plating. Plush focaccia comes with fragrant Parmesan truffle fondue; wagyu beef tenderloin carpaccio gets a dusting of aged Parmesan and truffle vinaigrette; gemelli alla norcina sports a rich creamy sauce fused with more truffle. Each instance uses just a whisper of the heady tuber, exuding elegance and finesse instead of excess. The off-menu chicken or veal Parmesan is portioned to serve a table of six, while the tonnarelli topped with langoustine and tiger shrimp can easily satisfy a trio. Nando hasn’t landed much recognition outside of the South Bay, but there’s no question that it serves some of the best Italian food in Los Angeles. A second outpost is opening in Beverly Hills in 2025." - Matthew Kang

"Italian charm with dishes like carpaccio and paccheri pasta." - Rebecca Roland

"Nando Trattoria in Manhattan Beach is the rare LA Italian restaurant that matches the local climate. Perched up on a hill a few hundred yards from the ocean, the salt air blows into this 50-seat dining room as soon as its door opens. Brothers Dario and Alessio Vullo, who hail from Sicily, brought their Michelin Bib Gourmand restaurant from Chicago to ritzy Manhattan Beach in 2021 (they also opened in Champaign, Illinois). The experience feels plucked right out of a busy street in Palermo, with pulsing house music, a CB2-style interior, and thick leather-bound menus. The tremendous cooking here defies the dated design and plating. Plush focaccia comes with fragrant Parmesan truffle fondue; wagyu beef tenderloin carpaccio gets a dusting of aged Parmesan and truffle vinaigrette; gemelli alla norcina sports a rich creamy sauce fused with more truffle. Each instance uses just a whisper of the heady tuber, exuding elegance and finesse instead of excess. The off-menu chicken or veal Parmesan is portioned to serve a table of six, while the tonnarelli topped with langoustine and tiger shrimp can easily satisfy a trio. Nando hasn’t landed much recognition outside of the South Bay, but there’s no question that it serves some of the best Italian food in Los Angeles. A second outpost is opening in Beverly Hills in 2025. — Matthew Kang, lead editor" - Eater Staff

"Manhattan Beach’s restaurant Nando comes by way of Illinois, a Michelin-recommended Italian restaurant run by two Sicilian brothers. The vibe is sleek, modern, and almost late 2000s without feeling the least bit aged. As for the food, expect terrific, unfussy pastas, seafood, and more that cater to the sometimes unadventurous palates of the South Bay, with the fancy service to make even a Monday feel like a Saturday night." - Eater Staff

"Guests can expect to pay $100 per person for dinner before drinks and tip, and yes, lest you think your eyes deceive you, that is a $600 bottle of wine on the list. Nando Milano, thus, could easily be written off as a restaurant oblivious to its location: Champaign is a college town, after all, and the folks who live there go to work wearing collars that are mostly blue, albeit a blue of a slightly whiter shade. But the restaurant’s sheer popularity proves that to be less of a deterrent than it might otherwise seem. Ask anyone in Champaign what the best restaurant in town is, and they’ll almost surely always answer, “Nando Milano.” Because good food is good food, right? That’s certainly the case with cavoletti ortolani, something not seen on the menus of other Italian restaurants in the area where the star is always going to be bottomless fettuccine alfredo. It is a “warm salad,” for lack of a better label, that comes with butternut squash, fried chickpeas, almonds, parmesan cheese, textures of Brussels sprouts, and truffle honey – in other words, everything wonderful in the world. For dessert, there is an affogato, something so simple that it could easily become a disaster, but which the staff here know how to make in a way that is quintessentially Italian. Speaking of the staff, the service at Nando Milano is a special kind of world-class — not because they are the gatekeepers of experience and make sure guests know they are just lucky to be there, but because they know what a night at Nando Milano means for most guests and make what could be rarefied and intimidating always feel welcoming and down to earth. Maybe that’s because Chef-owner Alessio Vullo opened the restaurant not to make money but as a way to keep his family together: with one Nando Milano already open in Chicago, Vullo packed up and moved to Champaign to open one there to follow his wife on her medical internship. The importance of family: that right there is something everyone in Central Illinois can relate to, if not also to a dinnertime soundtrack featuring sultry jazz covers of P!nk’s greatest hits." - Timothy DePeugh