Antico Nuovo

The Argument Against Safe Italian in Los Angeles

Los Angeles has more Italian restaurants than it knows what to do with, and most of them operate from the same defensive playbook: crowd-pleasing pasta shapes, imported burrata, a wine list weighted toward recognizable Tuscan labels. The city's appetite for the format is not in question; the ambition behind most of it is. Against that backdrop, the Italian cooking associated with farm traditions, preserved meats, offal-adjacent cuts, and regional specificity occupies a notably smaller niche, and Antico Nuovo, on Beverly Boulevard, is its clearest representative at the $$$$ price tier.

Chad Colby's trajectory into that niche did not follow a standard restaurant-industry arc. Before Antico opened in Koreatown roughly five years ago, Colby had been building a reputation through culinary classes covering pizza-making, whole-hog butchery, and charcuterie, disciplines rooted in preservation, animal utilization, and technique that most chefs either outsource or ignore. That grounding shows in the food. The kitchen's point of view is less about Italian nostalgia and more about the logic of Italian farmhouse cooking, where every cut carries value and nothing is simplified for a perceived audience. The LA Times, ranking Antico Nuevo twelfth on its 2024 list of 101 restaurants, framed it plainly: Colby operates a standout Italian restaurant in Los Angeles by defying a false American notion that the cuisines of Italy are nursery foods for adults.

What the Plates Actually Argue

The menu's structure makes the case better than any description of intent. Shaved Sicilian bottarga delivers concentrated umami over piped Normandy butter, served alongside a crisp balloon of focaccia, a combination that puts texture, fat, and salt into conversation rather than subordinating everything to one dominant note. A ragù Bolognese uses tiny cubes of veal tongue alongside silky beef cheeks, entangling pappardelle in a meaty depth that most Bolognese recipes in this city don't attempt. The plin dell'alta langa, a ridged small pasta from Piedmont, carries a filling of pancetta and rabbit. Thin-cut lamb chops, satisfyingly bony, arrive with a sauce built from egg yolk and beef stock.

The mortadella program illustrates how seriously Colby's kitchen treats the craft side of Italian food. A recipe for bouncy-smooth, delicately spiced mortadella takes three days to prepare; it is served with Vacche Rosse cheese, a high-aged, extra-nutty relative of Parmigiano-Reggiano, and 25-year-old aceto balsamico, the syrupy reduction produced under a different set of rules than mass-market balsamic. These are not embellishments layered onto otherwise conventional cooking. They are the evidence of a kitchen that has thought about Italian food traditions and committed to executing them at a level most local competitors do not approach.

Wine, Service, and the Room's Personality

The wine list holds 475 selections across an inventory of 3,000 bottles, with particular depth in Piedmont and Sicily, regions whose wines map directly to the kitchen's cooking traditions. France also features with some breadth. Pricing sits at the mid-tier mark for a restaurant operating at this level, with a range of price points rather than a list built entirely around high-end trophies. A $50 corkage fee applies for bottles brought from outside. The list earned the Star Wine List number-one ranking in 2026, a credential that places it in the top tier of Italian-focused programs in North America.

Wine Director and General Manager Rachel Grisafi, who also serves as sommelier alongside Haley James, is specifically noted in published criticism for decoding the often opaque world of Italian varietals tableside. In a city where Italian wine lists frequently default to familiar names, having floor staff with genuine fluency in Sicilian and Piedmontese grapes is a practical differentiator. The overall staff characterization in published reviews, warm, committed, conversant, reflects a service culture that treats Italian wine education as part of the dining experience rather than an afterthought.

Antico Nuovo holds a Michelin Plate (2025 and 2024), a signal that the guide recognizes the kitchen's quality without yet placing it in the starred tier occupied by restaurants like Bestia or the more structured fine-dining formats. The Google rating of 4.6 across 332 reviews points to consistent execution rather than a polarizing outlier. Opinionated About Dining, which tracks casual fine dining in North America, ranked it 90th in 2023 and 171st in 2024, a competitive field that includes Kato and other LA operators working at similar price and ambition levels.

Where Antico Nuovo Sits in Los Angeles Italian

The Italian restaurant field in Los Angeles has several distinct tiers. Osteria Mozza remains the reference point for the polished, high-profile end of the market. Angelini Osteria holds a different position as a long-running neighborhood institution. Bianca and Bottega Louie operate at more accessible price and format points. Antico Nuovo competes in a smaller group: restaurants at the $$$$ tier with serious wine programs, Michelin recognition, and a kitchen philosophy rooted in regional specificity rather than crowd-pleasing familiarity. In that comparable set, it has few direct rivals in the city.

Globally, the model of Italian cooking rooted in farm-to-table animal utilization and preserved-food traditions finds expression in very different contexts, from 8 1/2 Otto e Mezzo Bombana in Hong Kong to cenci in Kyoto, where Italian technique transplants into entirely different culinary cultures. Within Los Angeles's broader fine-dining circuit, which includes Lazy Bear in San Francisco, Alinea in Chicago, Le Bernardin in New York City, The French Laundry in Napa, and Single Thread Farm in Healdsburg as reference points for calibrating ambition, Antico Nuovo occupies the rare position of a restaurant that competes on ingredient depth and technique without deploying a tasting-menu format or formal dining-room architecture.

Planning Your Visit

The restaurant operates Tuesday through Sunday, with dinner service beginning at 5:30 pm and running until 10 pm. A reservation is now required; published criticism notes that booking a week or two in advance has become standard, a change from its earlier years when last-minute availability was more common. That shift is an indicator of sustained demand rather than a brief post-opening surge.

For a broader comparison with Emeril's in New Orleans and other chef-driven American institutions, those guides offer useful calibration.