Los Angeles hasn’t always been known as a steakhouse town, but any collection of the best places for grilled meat in the city has to include Chi Spacca, previously an appendage of Nancy Silverton’s complex of restaurants that includes Pizzeria and Osteria Mozza. Opening chef Chad Colby, now doing some of the city’s top pastas and grilled meats at Antico Nuovo, conceived the menu at Chi Spacca. His initial impression mostly remains, with an Italian-oriented set of bistecca and costata alla Fiorentina slow-roasted over a wood fire grill placed right in the middle of the dining room; seasonal sides orient around the farmers market bounty. In the years since Colby’s tenure, fine dining veteran Armen Ayvazyan, previously at Auburn and the Rose Venice, has reinvigorated the menu while keeping its beloved classics. Nearly every table will start with the focaccia di recco, a melty cheese-laden flatbread served on a piping hot copper pan. Colby installed one of the city’s first artisanal salumi programs, where sausages and other forcemeats are aged on the premises and served on wooden boards. They’re still popular — and very expensive. In between, Colby’s array of British-style meat pies, like the bone marrow and beef, help allay any remaining hunger with a dollop of roasted meat, fat, butter, and potato. If there’s room left on the table, the steaks make an incredible centerpiece, dry-aged and sliced in the kitchen for all to share. Still, the pork tomahawk, served with its juicy belly fat on the bone, and covered with ample fennel pollen perfuming the meat with the ineffable aroma of an Italian meadow, could be the winner of the menu. Plain and simple, Chi Spacca is the definition of a California Italian steakhouse, a bastion of gluttony in the City of Angels. — Matthew Kang, correspondent
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