Al Bacio

I was just at Al Bacio last night. I was there from about 6 to about 7:30 PM. Unfortunately, we were the only ones in the place. Couldn’t understand that at all. The food and the service at Al Bacio were OUTSTANDING.
We ate a number of dishes, tapas style. We had the halibut, the ahi tuna tartare, gnocci, tagliatelle and they also served us up a really nice pesto that wasn’t on the menu. All of these dishes were fantastic.
Later we ordered desserts. Ultimately, they gave us a few freebies, such that we ate every dessert on the menu, and one or two that weren’t! The chef was making homemade ice cream while we were there. We tried the vanilla (very creamy) the honey (which was creamy and sweet) and the hazelnut (WOW!). The orange cheesecake was fantastic as well. It was very light and creamy, and was made without a crust (not graham cracker, nor filo dough). Very nicely done.
The wait staff was awesome, and the chef even made an appearance to bring out some of his special creations. All were very friendly, service oriented and eager to please the diners.
If you are looking for an upscale place to enjoy some fancy Italian/​Mediterranean food, go to this restaurant. You won’t be disappointed. It is a bit pricey, but definitely worth it.

I can only see speak for their dessert and coffee, but it was exquisite. And the service was equally superb. The waiter made us caffé affogato by request with their mint chocolate gelato, and it was incredibly delicious. They also had us try their cappuccino parfait, which was also delicious. The suggestively sweet almond rum and cream frozen dessert was one more unique reason to come back.
Don’t be one of those losers at the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf down the street, who don’t know what they’re missing. Go to Al Bacio!

Food 6 out of 10, it was ok nothing special. Restaurant was very very small. Service great. Nothing fancy to impress someone on a date. it was ok to experience one time but not gonna go back.

The place was quiet when we were there. Service was good, food decent but overpriced for what we got. To start we had the trio of bruschetta, which was three pieces of bread with some garnish. I cook better bruschettas in my kitchen at home so 18 dollars was a robbery. The other starter was the italian cheeses and salamis. It was good cheese and salami/​prosciutto so that was pretty good, not for 18 dollars though…
For main course we had the papardelle with duck ragu, this was the best dish of the day. My wife had the rigatoni pasta with tomato sauce. The pasta was undercooked (yeah, not even al dente) but the sauce was OK.
Overall the food was OK but overpriced, service was very good and friendly. The place is located at Sunset Blvd and I guess a lot of tourists stop by once and thats it.

I love this place. I have been obsessed with cacio e Pepe since I went to Rome, but I haven’t been able to find a restaurant that makes it as good as it Italy… until now. The chef uses the perfect ratio of cheese and pepper and it’s amazing! My husband is equally as obsessed with the ravioli carbonara. I’ve also had the seafood in the parchment paper, which was good, but I’m partial to their pasta for sure.
The service is also amazing! Every time we’ve been the staff has been very attentive and accommodating. Also, they are good with making wine recommendations.
I completely recommend this place! It definitely doesn’t seem to be well known yet (it’s always pretty dead), so get there before it blows up!

Came to LA to take my godmother out for her 90^th birthday. She lives for a great bowl of pasta, is quite the expert and quite the critic so the bar was set quite high for me and Al Bacio!
I’ve been thinking about how to write this review. I’m not even going to try and do justice to describing the individual dishes and for that reason took no pictures of the food. Instead let me try and explain the restaurant and food this way…
You’ve rented a car and are driving through Italy with your partner. You’re taking some back roads between cities through the rolling fields, bucolic countryside and quaint villages. You decide to stop in some charming little town in the middle of nowhere that no ones heard of and stumble across a cozy little mom and pop Enoteca with a few tables.
You sit down, order a glass of local wine, a bowl of pasta with fresh simple ingredients, some local dish and BAM… whoa, what’s going on here! All of a sudden your senses come alive and your mind and taste buds try and reconcile how such authentic taste, flavor and texture comes from such a simple blend of ingredients. You experience one gustatory orgasm after another as you each try everything each of you ordered.
When you get home you can’t stop telling all your friends about that place you accidentally discovered and how great that meal was. It becomes the highlight of your trip. You and your partner vow to sign up for Italian cooking classes so you can learn to make food like that at home (but then get busy and never do)
The simplicity is the complexity. This is real, authentic honest food without the frills, twists, celebrity chef creative genius stuff, just good ingredients, good food the way it aught to be and a talented chef. No fancy presentation necessary. Nice cozy but contemporarily elegant space and delightful staff.
Oh and what did my godmother think… one of the best bowls of spaghetti in recent memory. Though at age 90, I’m not really sure how to take that!

This place is so unique and truly amazing. Service was outstanding the food was like nothing I have ever had at an Italian restaurant. Just remarkable. I can’t think of anything I didn’t like about this place. Even the artwork on the wall was brilliant. Please enjoy if you have the chance.

Truly one of the most hidden gems you will ever chance to stumble across in Los Angeles. The service is so attentive and food so beautifully prepared you will wonder why it took so long to discover Al Bacio.
From the outside Al Bacio is a quiet ristorante without the pulsating thrum of activity that is the Sunset Strip. Though a restaurant where Robert DiNiro and Leonardo DiCaprio can dine away from the glare of the lights for the rest of us it is a restaurant for a phenomenal intimate dinner, or a wonderful group celebration and if anyone in the group doesn’t care for Italian they will be quickly resolved to devotion by the end of the meal.
Our meal began with wonderful Amuse Bouche of homemade cheese and herbs and indeed my mouth was so Amused that it verged obscenity. One of the best uses of your mouth you will ever make in public.
From there we began with a Burratta and Prosciutto plate with Burratta so fresh and a Prosciutto so velvety and lightly smoked that I have never before tasted that I almost wept with joy. It is the most simple looking dish in the world but with the freshest and most flavorful ingredients it seems as though the you’ve reached directly into Italy to enjoy it.
For our second courses we enjoyed house made pillows of joy, otherwise known as Raviolione. They are tender hand made pasta filled with buttery Pecorino and drizled in a light black pepper sauce with crispy prosciutto. The glutton in me wanted to order five more servings.
Our main course were seafood dishes and we had Branzino grilled to tender juicy perfection garnished with an aromatic tomato and onion herb sauce. The skin slid off perfectly and the fish tasted as though it had been caught just that morning. We also enjoyed a wonderful mixed Seafood dish of clams, muscles, prawns and shrimp all dancing in the same tantalizing red sauce. The entire dish wrapped sheets of parchment paper gives the dish the entire effect of an enormous gift which one unwraps with rewarded anticipation.
Lastly to wrap up our meal at Al Bacio we had cinnamon dusted pear tart deserts that sound quite plain except that are house made in such light an airy crust that I’d never before enjoyed that truly set them apart from any other restaurant desert.
The staff is friendly and service attentive without being overbearing. Everything we needed was always taken care of efficiently and with a genuine warm smile.
If you enjoy eating then you will be absolutely elated you dined here.

Very pleased with the food and service here. I message the restaurant through Unilocal in the afternoon about making a reservation for that same evening. Right away I received a phone call confirming my reservation. The gentleman on the phone was very nice. We showed up to our reservation and were greeted by the friendly staff. I ordered the roasted chicken and it was delicious. My husband ordered the Bolognese and he enjoyed his meal as well. The environment was cozy and comfortable. We will be back!

This place is PERFECT for a date night! My boyfriend likes to order a lot so we ordered 5 different items on the menu. Spaghetti, chicken, hangar steak, tuna tar tar & an arugula salad. Every dish was delicious!!! I wish I could’ve ate more! Generous, filling portions. In addition, the service is incredible. Our server Ficay (I hope I spelled his name correctly) is the sweetest man ever! So full of life & extremely accommodating. We’ll definitely be coming back here.

I really love this place for their Spaghetti Cacio e Pepe, which happens to be my favorite Roman pasta dish. The dish here is not as cheesy as I like it, and tends to be more peppery than the ones I’ve eaten in Rome, but it comes pretty close to the real thing! The dinner size portion is the perfect amount for me, along with a salad. I tried the Carpaccio di Manzo salad and it was outstanding! The chef even gave us a complimentary appetizer to start. I also tried their pudding for dessert (I forget the name of it). It went well with the vanilla gelato on top. They also have a good selection of wine bottles at reasonable prices. The atmosphere is quaint, cozy & romantic. It’s like a little house. The server that we had was an Italian guy from Rome and he was phenomenal — very attentive and pleasant. The chef is young & from Venice. We went on a Friday night and we were the only ones there for a long time, which seemed odd to me, being that it was a Friday night. Finally two customers came in and sat at the bar. You could tell they were regulars there. I hope this restaurant makes it, because the food is authentic & delicious. Parking is free in the back of their restaurant. Give it a try!

Amazing food, creative, friendly staff
Best prosciutto and Raviolo carbonara
Third trip back, just love it.
Pasta super fresh

Great food! The best part was the service!!! Our server bent over backwards to make sure we had a great experience. He even brought out phone charges so we could carve our phones. Excellent!!!

Love everything about this restaurant. I went there for a Valentine’s Day dinner. I had such a great experience there, food was great, great service with a romantic table set up.

Before I booked the reservations through open table I read the reviews and mostly everybody liked it. My friend had been raving about this restaurant and finally we made it there today.
We were so surprised that it was only us (4 of us) during lunch. The steak was to rave about, very tender and juicy.
The Branzino was cooked into perfection.
Desserts were awesome. This is a gem and will definitely go back again!

I’m always pretty hesitant to eat at nice restaurants for dineLA but our group decided to give it a shot anyways.
My group of 4 had reservations at 7pm and I was the first to arrive. I walked into this beautifully romantic restaurant with only a family on the patio. This made me pretty nervous. The wait staff was friendly and wasn’t very pushy which I appreciated.
For the first course, we had the carpaccio and burrata with prosciutto. I’m such a carpaccio snob, but honestly I feel like it’s such a simple dish. I don’t understand why so many restaurants like to throw all these creamy sauces on it, ruining the quality of the beef. Luckily, they stuck to just lemon juice and EVOO with sprinklings of arugula and parmesan shavings. Although I do feel like it was missing the bright bite of capers. I don’t think I’ve ever had a carpaccio that didn’t have capers.
The burrata and prosciutto on the other hand; I died. The burrata was creamy and mild, and the saltiness of the prosciutto was this beautiful harmony in my mouth.
For the second course, we did the mushroom risotto and rigitoni with pork&beef ragu. I thought the rigitoni was just okay, although the meat was extremely tender. But damn, that risotto. I would’ve judged them hard if an Italian restaurant couldn’t manage a good risotto but it was sooo good.
Honestly, between these two dishes and our bottle if wine, I was pretty content. If only we could’ve ended our meal here…
For the main dish, I had the seafood al cartoccio and it was just… meh. There wasn’t really anything special about it. And serving it in the parchment paper just really turned me off for some reason.
It was pretty disappointing that the appetizer dishes were beyond greater than the main course. Oh and, the amuse bouche was again just meh.
And, I love bread more than almost anyone but don’t eat the bread here. It’s pretty disappointing.
All in all, come for great starter dishes but have your dinner somewhere else. It’s pretty pricey for meh quality.

I’ve heard a lot of good things about this restaurant, but it appears that as it is often the case, my experience differed from the masses.
A friend and I visited Al Bacio around 10 pm on a Friday night. The restaurant was almost empty by then, but we were still seated on their cozy patio overlooking Subset Blvd. The interior of the restaurant is very intimate with a warm and welcoming feel.
The host took our drink order of sparkling water and immediately after that we were greeted by the waiter who brought the menus. Everything seemed quite appetizing, but we settled on a couple of starters and an entrée each. Shortly after ordering the kitchen sent over an amuse bouche of what I believe was Acquerello rice and a pickled mushroom served in a small mason jar. An interesting presentation for what turned out to be one very bland bite. Besides the vinegar from the pickled mushroom, there was really no flavor. The dish desperately needed salt. Of course, be careful what you wish for.
Our two appetizers, the Burrata with Black Label San Daniele Prosciutto, EVO, and Candied Tomato as well as a Raviolone a la Carbonara did not suffer from lack of seasoning. On the contrary. The burrata was actually very creamy and quite enjoyable, but perhaps San Daniele is not the best pairing as the prosciutto was super salty in both dishes and overpowered all the delicate flavor. Especially for what could have been a very impressive carbonara dish with an egg yolk cooked inside of the raviolo. Unfortunately, the pasta itself was overdone and paired with super salty bits of pork the dish just did not work.
As we awaited our entrees, we hoped for the better, but were quite skeptical considering the aforementioned. Meanwhile, the wait staff was refreshing our glasses and being very attentive. When the entrees arrived, mine, a Seared Alaskan Halibut, Sweet Pea Purée, and Calabrian Roasted Eggplant; my friend’s, a Chicken a la Cacciatora, Porcini Mushroom, San Daniele, Red Bell Pepper, and Red Onion, they both looked very appetizing, but upon further inspections our worst fears were realized. The halibut, overcooked to a stringy consistency, bland as it could be a top of unseasoned, flat pea pure and topped with grainy and almost sandy roasted eggplant caviar was certainly a letdown. I actually don’t even think that it was an Alaskan Halibut as the fish did not have any of the signature fattiness of what one expects from that species. Of course, the other option could be that the poor halibut made its long journey in vane, only to mishandled at the kitchen. Not quite sure what’s worse. As for the chicken. after taking a taste, the arid texture and dryness of the meat was beyond reproach. If it was my order, I would have sent it back, but my friend, starving after not eating for 5 periods of the Stanley Cup finals in which LA Kings have put up a well-​deserved win for the 2014 cup, simply could not wait for another order to come out and so he finished his dish albeit without enjoyment.
Believe it or not we decided to finish on a sweet note, after all who goes to a place named, «The Kiss» and departs with salt on their palates. Again, be careful what you wish for. When our lovely waitress described the Tiramisu as light, I was rather skeptical, but decided to hold my tongue. Let me tell you, this was the heaviest, sweetest tiramisu I have ever had. Not a hint of coffee or bitterness from the cocoa powder to cut through the cloyingly sweet dessert. I am not even talking about lemony notes or any type of brightness. Although the espresso was good, even it was not enough to make this «kiss» and enjoyable one.

It is definitely a plus that they offer valet parking because if you drove past it you probably wouldn’t eat here when it is located off a busy street with hardly any street parking available.
Once inside, you will find a cozy, romantic interior with really fresh and delicious food to boot.
Chef Christian was formerly at Pelican Hill Resort and now helms the kitchen at Al Bacio. He brings authentic Italian fare from his childhood to the fore and you can taste it in how he executes the dishes with love and care.
I especially love his pastas… go for something simple like the cacio e pepe or the handmade tagliatelle with a lamb ragu.
For entrees, I loved the whole fish baked in parchment paper. When you pierce the fish with your fork, the flesh falls apart with ease and is so delicate you won’t stop eating it.
The wine list is pretty good as well and they will pair your meal with wines if you so choose. Amarone is a good region to go with.
This gem definitely needs to be found. I wish we lived closer because I’d totally come here for the pastas a few times a month!

We tried to go to Church Key without reservations at 8 pm on a Friday night (major fail) and ended up walking across the street and finding this gem of a restaurant. Seriously the friendliest and most helpful staff around, a drastic contrast to the snooty hostess at Church Key that was offended we would show up without reservations and expect to get a table.
At Al Bacio, they were very welcoming (granted the entire interior of the restaurant was empty) and when we each showed them the foursquare check in special for a free glass of prosecco, they brought it with a smile (rather than the grumble I get from other places when I show them a check in special). Al Bacio has only been there for a few months, and I hope more people find out about it so they are able to stay open. As great as the location is, at the same time, it’s also difficult because there aren’t a lot of people just walking around looking for a place to eat… we did so only because we’d paid $ 8 to park in a lot and Church Key couldn’t accommodate us.
We sat on the outdoor patio (covered, with heat lamps) with a view of Sunset Boulevard.
The food was excellent:
Polipo Alla Griglia, Bagnetto Rosso, misticanza (Grilled Octopus, Red Bagnetto, Misticanza) — the octopus itself was a generous serving, cooked perfectly. The sauce was interesting; I’ve never quite had octopus with a sauce like that before. I’m not sure it needed the sauce though, as the octopus itself was very flavorful.
Ippoglosso Scottato in Padella, Crema di Piselli, Melanzane Arrosto alla Calabrese
(Seared Alaskan Halibut, Sweet Pea Purée, Calabrian Roasted Eggplant) — again a generous serving but I scraped my plate clean. Light and healthy, yet flavorful.
My bf had the asparagus risotto which was delicious. I definitely took more than a few bites off his plate.
Definitely a more traditional Italian restaurant (my bf is Italian and said that he has never seen Chicken Cacciatora on a menu before; it’s something your Mom would make for you if you lived in Italy. I thought about getting it but wanted something a bit lighter; perhaps next time.
A very pleasant, low key (especially for the area) experience. Great food without pretension.,
Note that they do have valet in front of the restaurant if you are coming to eat here.

This restaurant used to be Osteria Drago. I liked the restaurant and was sad that they were no longer there. I wanted to check this new restaurant out and see how it transformed.
I liked the menu and what they offered there. They sounded authentic and made me indecisive about what to order. The waitress recommended Sea bream, so i ordered it. bf ordered Wagyu steak. We also ordered White asparagus risotto for an appetizer and a glass of Chianti.
The wine was delicious and so smooth. While enjoying the wine, the waitress brought a bread basket. The bread was warm and soft. There was a baby tomato inside the bread and that was yummy. A tiny jar of bread spread came with the bread. A tiny piece of dried ham and pesto was on the top of butter cream. This was ok. We asked for olive oil and balsamic vinegar instead. The olive oil they brought was very thick and very green, and the vinegar also had a great flavor. Excellent quality.
The risotto was absolutely delicious. Very creamy and very well cooked. Sea bream was great. They opened the fish and put diced veggies in the middle of the fish. It was well baked and delicious. Wagyu looked gorgeous as well. We ended dinner with 3 different kinds of Gelato, Pistachio, Hazel nut, and Double chocolate, and a cup of coffee. The gelato was good and coffee was delicious.
To just note, it was a little weird that there was only bathroom and a male toilet and a regular toilet were in the same bathroom. There was no «ladies’ room» in this restaurant. I didn’t like the bathroom door either. It was a frosted glass and you can tell that someone is in the bathroom. The service was excellent. The waitress was attentive and pleasant. The décor was simple but chic. The food was great too. When I return to this restaurant, I will avoid going to the bathroom but will enjoy everything else.