Serious restaurants often run two operations in the same room. There is the dining room, which is the thing everybody books and writes about, and there is the bar, which frequently has a different menu, a different atmosphere, a different price and — in a surprising number of cases — the better deal. The bar menu is rarely promoted, almost never photographed, and is where the people who eat out constantly tend to sit.
Bar-only menus are the best-value thing in most serious restaurants and they are almost never on the main page. Tell Karpo where you are eating this week and get the off-menu and bar-only formats worth booking rather than the headline tasting menus.
At Osteria Mozza the split is unusually explicit. There is a five-course pasta tasting menu that is available exclusively at the Amaro Bar, exclusively from Monday to Thursday, at eighty dollars a head. It is not a smaller version of the dining-room menu. It is a separate thing, and some of the pastas on it cannot be ordered anywhere else in the restaurant at all.
What you actually get
Four classic pasta courses and a seasonal dessert. Some of those pastas exist only within this menu, which is the detail that elevates the whole thing from a good-value option into something worth planning around — you are not choosing between the tasting and the à la carte, because part of what is on the tasting is not on the à la carte. There is an optional wine pairing at sixty-five dollars for anyone who wants the full version.
Four pasta courses in a row is a specific kind of meal and worth thinking about honestly before booking. It is not a progression from light to heavy through different techniques; it is one form, examined repeatedly, which is either the most interesting way to eat in this city or an hour of carbohydrates depending entirely on your temperament. If you find the idea appealing rather than exhausting, this is close to the best possible version of it.
No substitutions, and why that is reasonable
Modifications and substitutions are politely declined. That is stated up front rather than discovered at the table, which is the fair way to do it, and in the context of a fixed pasta tasting it makes obvious sense — the whole menu is four dishes and there is nothing to swap them for. The useful consequence is that the decision is made before you book rather than at the counter: if somebody at the table cannot eat this menu, the à la carte is also available at the bar, and that is the arrangement to make.
This is one of the quiet advantages of bar seating in general. A dining-room booking commits the whole table to one thing. Two people at a bar can order completely differently without anybody feeling they have derailed the evening.
Monday to Thursday is the whole point
A menu that runs only on weeknights is doing something deliberate. Weekends in a restaurant of this profile are full at full price; midweek is when a kitchen can afford to run something more interesting for the people who actually want it. The effect for a diner is that the best-value and arguably most interesting menu in the building is available precisely on the nights when the room is calmest, which inverts the usual relationship between how good a night is and how hard it is to get.
Practically: book a Tuesday or a Wednesday. Reservations go through the usual online channels and bar seats are a small number, so this is not a menu to attempt on a walk-in at half past seven on a Thursday. Early in the week and early in the evening is the easiest combination.
- Five courses — four pastas and a seasonal dessert — at $80 per person
- Amaro Bar only, Monday to Thursday evenings; not available in the dining room
- Some pastas appear on this menu and nowhere else on the carte
- Optional wine pairing at $65; no substitutions, but the à la carte is available at the bar too
Sitting at the amaro bar
The bar takes its name from its amaro collection, and the format rewards using it. A run of four pasta courses is exactly the meal that benefits from a bitter digestif at the end rather than a third glass of wine, and having a serious amaro list within arm's reach of the plate is a genuinely well-designed piece of sequencing. If you have never worked through an amaro list, this is the correct place to start — ask, rather than ordering the one you have heard of. The category runs from gentle and orange-peel sweet to aggressively medicinal, and the person behind the bar will steer you far better than a menu description can. It is also the cheapest interesting thing you will order all evening.
The restaurant sits at Melrose and Highland, on the Hancock Park side of the city and within easy reach of Hollywood, Larchmont and Mid-Wilshire. Valet is the standard answer for parking; the surrounding residential streets are permitted and not worth the risk. If you are making an evening of it, Larchmont Village is a few minutes south and is one of the more pleasant short walks in this part of Los Angeles for afterwards.
Practical notes
Osteria Mozza, at Melrose and Highland, Los Angeles. The pasta tasting menu is five courses — four classic pastas plus a seasonal dessert — at eighty dollars per person, served exclusively at the Amaro Bar on Monday through Thursday evenings. Several of the pastas are available only within this menu. An optional wine pairing is sixty-five dollars. Modifications and substitutions are declined, though the full à la carte menu is also available at the bar. Reservations are made online and bar seats are limited, so book early in the week and early in the evening. Valet parking is the practical option.
Tags: #LosAngeles #HancockPark #Melrose #TastingMenu #Pasta #ItalianFood #BarSeating #LAEats #HiddenGems #DateNight #AmaroBar #Michelin #ThingsToDoLA #WeeknightDinner
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Ask Karpo first
Want to know which Los Angeles restaurants run a cheaper or better menu at the bar than at the tables, which nights it runs, and whether walk-ins are realistic? Ask Karpo for the bar-only formats near you and what to book.
