Osteria Mozza Voted The Best Italian Restaurant In Los Angeles

What makes a great Italian restaurant? For some it may be the antipasti, while for others it's the quality of the wines and pastas that's the sure-fire test. Holding up one dish is dangerous. Octopus? Lasagna? Cacio e pepe? Which one dish should be the barometer of a great Italian restaurant?

The steps we took to compile our most-recent ranking were as thorough and comprehensive as possible: we looked at restaurants that made it to our 101 Best Restaurants in America; we also recruited an illustrious panel of judges that included some of the country's top food writers, critics, and bloggers to submit their suggestions, which we supplemented with our own choices, including previous years' rankings as well as lauded newcomers. This list of hundreds of restaurants was then built into a survey that was sent out to more than 100 panelists, who voted for their favorites. The final ranking included a significant number of Italian restaurants, and to create this list we supplemented the Italian restaurants that made it into our final list of 101 with those that came in as runners-up and those that were featured on this year's list of the country's 50 best casual restaurants. Turns out there are many Italian restaurants worthy of renown in America, and five reside in Los Angeles.

Nancy Silverton, whose La Brea Bakery changed the game for artisanal bread in America, teams up here with New York-based Italian-food moguls Mario Batali and Joe Bastianich in lively, urban Osteria Mozza, complete with a mozzarella bar, unusual pasta (calf's brain ravioli, spaghetti with marinated white anchovies), and main dishes ranging from grilled quail wrapped in pancetta to duck al mattone. 

Osteria Mozza 's fare is so good, it outshone Chi Spacca (#15), Valentino (#26), Dan Tana's (#27), and Vincenti Ristorante (#29) and was voted the highest-ranked Italian restaurant in the City of Angels by our panel of culinary experts, who awarded it the #7 spot. This means that, according to our list, Osteria Mozza serves the third-best Italian food in the country, and the very best in Los Angeles