Cento Fresh Pasta Shop, West Adams: Bar Seats at 5 pm

Cento Pasta Bar, at 4921 W Adams Blvd in West Adams, is a small restaurant built around a wrap-around bar that encloses an open kitchen, so the pasta is made and finished in front of the people eating it. It is not a retail counter selling raw noodles by the pound. It is where Angelenos go when a fresh pasta craving means a plate of beet spaghetti or sweet corn agnolotti cooked minutes after the dough was shaped. The dinner-only schedule and the courtyard out back make it one of the most relaxed pasta stops in the city.

Cento began in 2015 as a lunch residency inside Mignon, the downtown Los Angeles wine bar owned by Santos Uy, with chef Avner Levi cooking pasta for office workers at midday. Whatnow Los Angeles reported in 2021 that the pair had opened the original Cento Pasta Bar there, and the Michelin Guide later described it as a one-time pop-up gone brick-and-mortar. The permanent restaurant on West Adams Boulevard opened in late 2021, and the Infatuation reviewed it in January 2022, soon after the move.

The Michelin Guide lists Cento as a recommended restaurant in Los Angeles, and its inspectors singled out the courtyard: capped off by a large tree set with twinkling lights, they called it an absolute stunner. In August 2026, Food Republic put Cento on its list of under-the-radar Los Angeles restaurants to try this year, praising the bar that wraps around the open kitchen in all its pasta-making glory.

The room is compact. A 2022 profile by The Brassy counted about 25 seats inside and roughly 30 more in the courtyard, which is why the space feels like a neighborhood dinner party rather than a big-city dining room. That size also shapes the experience at the bar, where you can watch the cooks drop each portion of pasta, toss it in a pan and plate it within a few feet of your glass. If you care about how fresh pasta is handled, a bar seat is the most instructive one in the house.

The current menu on the official site keeps the pasta list short. Beet Spaghetti is the dish most people associate with Cento: the noodles come out a deep magenta, dressed with brown butter, poppy seeds, ricotta and chive. It looks dramatic, but the flavor is gentle and earthy, and it is the right first order for anyone new to the restaurant. Spicy Pomodoro uses rigatoni with Calabrian chili, truffle, ricotta and basil, a red-sauce plate with more heat and perfume than the name suggests.

Broccoli Bucatini brings garlic, pecorino, anchovy, burrata and toasted bread crumbs, a savory, slightly salty bowl that pairs well with a crisp white wine. Sweet Corn Agnolotti, filled pasta in the Piedmont style, gets a California twist with charred corn, crème fraîche, Old Bay and chervil. The Bolognese is the outlier on the list: instead of a long noodle, it is served over ricotta gnocchi with 28-month Parmigiano and cream, rich enough to split between two people.

For a table of two, order three pastas rather than two and pass them around. One red, one butter-based and one filled is the easiest way to see the range of the kitchen. Larger plates on the menu include a mole-braised osso buco, which the Michelin inspectors also mentioned, if someone at the table wants meat after the pasta.

The menu does move. Dishes listed on older third-party menus, such as a duck confit with a different garnish, no longer match what the official site shows today, while the beet pasta that the Michelin inspectors wrote about in 2024 is still on the current list. Treat the beet spaghetti and the Bolognese gnocchi as the constants and the rest of the pasta section as a snapshot of what the kitchen is cooking now. If a new filled pasta appears, order it, because filled shapes show off hand-made dough more than any other.

Cento is a dinner restaurant. It opens at 5 pm every day. On Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday it closes at 10 pm, and on Friday and Saturday it closes at 11 pm. There is no lunch service at the West Adams location, so the old downtown pop-up habit of a pasta lunch does not carry over.

Reservations are taken through OpenTable, which the official site embeds on its booking page. Book a few days ahead for a weekend courtyard table, especially if the lit tree is the reason you are coming. A booking guide published by SeatSwiper in August 2026 calls the wrap-around marble bar the walk-in friendly zone, and it has the added appeal of a direct view of the pasta station. Arriving right at the 5 pm opening on a weekday is the simplest way to sit down without a booking.

West Adams is one of the oldest neighborhoods in Los Angeles, with Craftsman and Victorian houses on the side streets and a growing restaurant row on the boulevard itself. If you arrive early, take a short walk west along West Adams Boulevard, where Alta Adams serves soul food with a garden patio, and Mizlala serves Mediterranean plates if part of your group would rather skip pasta. The residential blocks north of the boulevard are worth a slow look for their historic houses and deep front porches.

The area is best reached by car or rideshare, since West Adams Boulevard is a few minutes from the Interstate 10 exits at La Brea Avenue and Crenshaw Boulevard. After dinner, the drive to Culver City or Mid-City for a nightcap is short.

Cento Pasta Bar is at 4921 W Adams Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90016. The restaurant also answers email at eat@cento.group. It opens at 5 pm daily, with a 10 pm close Sunday through Thursday and an 11 pm close on Friday and Saturday. Book through OpenTable for courtyard tables, or try the bar for a walk-in. Order one more pasta than you think you need, and start with the beet spaghetti if you only try one dish.

Ask Karpo in the Karpo APP to find a wine bar or dessert stop near West Adams after dinner, and it will plan a short drive that gets you there before closing.